Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown
by bluedana
Summary: An unexpected obstacle in the Expanse brings Archer face to face with an enemy more powerful than the Xindi: his own fear. Rated T for language and disturbing images.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **Star Trek: Enterprise and its characters are the property of Paramount.

**Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown**

**Prologue**

"This is Lieutenant Malcolm Reed. All hands: Security Code One-One-One is now in effect. All off-duty personnel report to quarters. All on-duty personnel report to stations. This is not a drill."

Captain Jonathan Archer was covered in perspiration. Shirtless, his breath coming in labored gasps, he felt as if he had just sprinted a three and a half minute mile. As the announcement repeated, he stumbled across the room and slapped the comm unit.

"Archer to Bridge. Report."

Hoshi's voice was tight with tension. "Sir, Security was called to C-Deck at oh-two hundred twenty hours. I believe there has been one casualty." She swallowed. "That's all I know right now."

"Have T'Pol meet me in Sickbay. Reed, too, when he's able." Archer sat on the bed, trying to clear his mind. His heartbeat was still galloping along until it felt as if his chest would burst.

He reached for a clean uniform and noticed that his hands were shaking.

The captain strode into Sickbay grim-faced but under control. T'Pol had arrived only moments before. She and the doctor were just now stepping out from behind the sterile curtain. Her face was impassive. She nodded to him.

Phlox held a scanner in his hands. His smock was smeared with red, human blood. The corners of his mouth were turned down.

Before either the doctor or the sub-commander could speak, Archer asked, "What happened?"

Phlox flattened his lips, a sign that he was clearly upset. T'Pol started the explanation. "Approximately thirty-seven minutes ago, Crewman Vaughn reported to Lieutenant Reed that she was being attacked. Security responded to C-Deck and found the crewman unconscious and badly beaten. Lt. Reed secured the area immediately, but has yet found no indication as to the identity of the assailant."

"Or his or her whereabouts?" Archer asked.

"Correct. Which is why he invoked Code One-Eleven."

"And has everyone reported as ordered?"

"All crew are accounted for," T'Pol affirmed, "and there have been no intruder alerts."

Archer turned his attention to Phlox. "How is Crewman Vaughn?" The lines etched around his mouth seemed to grow deeper with every second.

"She is, as you might expect, comatose. She has sustained severe head trauma, caused by a solid, possibly metal, blunt object. She has four broken ribs and a shattered right elbow." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "From my initial – albeit quick – examination, it appears that there are some defensive wounds on her forearms, but, in my opinion, her attacker continued to use force after she had lost consciousness."

"Will she live?" Archer's gaze strayed to the curtained area.

"I do not know, " Phlox admitted. "We have stabilized her, but her injuries are very serious."

Archer moved toward the curtain. Phlox placed a restraining hand on the captain's arm. Archer glanced down in surprise, then said, "I want to see her."

"I would not recommend that," the doctor said.

Archer felt himself begin to simmer. "Why not," he said tightly.

T'Pol said, "Captain, given the extent of Crewman Vaughn's injuries, I believe it would be . . . distressing for you to observe."

"I'm a big boy, T'Pol," Archer retorted, "I think I can handle it." He nailed her with a gaze that dared her to make him make that an order. After a moment, T'Pol dropped her eyes and stepped aside. Archer took a deep breath and parted the sterile curtain.

It took everything in him not to react to the sight of his crewmember beaten so savagely as to be almost unrecognizable. The left side of her head was literally caved in; the right side was blotched and discolored. Phlox had resorted to inserting a breathing tube, a mechanism he rarely ever used. He had laid a sterile bandage over the more damaged half of her face, leaving one eye visible.

Archer slammed the lid down on any emotion and locked into starship captain mode. He could not be weak. He could not indulge in grief or horror. He straightened his spine and stepped toward the bed.

The monitors attached gingerly to the shattered body beeped steadily, but all sound faded into the background as he realized that Crewman Vaughn was not, as Phlox had indicated, in a coma, but was watching him with one glittering eye. He dragged the remnants of his composure around himself before his dismay could reach his face. Her eye moved as she tracked his approach.

He reached out and put his hand lightly on her arm, which rested, bare, on top of the sheet. She just stared at him with that unblinking eye.

T'Pol leaned in next to Archer. "Crewman Vaughn, did you see your attacker? Can you tell us anything at all?"

Vaughn closed her eye briefly, then slowly reached for the captain's sleeve. Pinching a tiny bit of fabric between her thumb and forefinger, she gazed at him, and then drifted off into unconsciousness.

"I did this?" Archer staggered back. "She's saying _I did this_?"

"Well, keep in mind, Captain," Phlox protested, "that she has suffered a serious head trauma. We are likely to get more reliable evidence from Lieutenant Reed's investigation. Perhaps we should check with him."

T'Pol added, "She could merely have been communicating that a member of the crew committed this act, or that her attacker wore blue, or was male. I do not believe she was accusing you, Captain."

For a moment, Archer didn't move. He looked down at the broken crewmember once more, feeling the crushing weight of responsibility. He would have to notify her parents. _I regret to inform you that your daughter Amy didn't die in the line of duty. She was murdered by her captain._ He brushed the tips of his fingers across her hair, then turned to go. "Spin it any way you'd like, T'Pol. I'll be in my Ready Room."

Reed met him halfway to the turbo lift, face grim. "Sir, I've analyzed a number of samples collected at the scene and from Vaughn's clothing. Mostly there was nothing in the corridor to identify anyone else, but her uniform did yield a few fibers and strands of hair that were foreign to her." T'Pol came up behind him. Archer waited.

"Sir," Reed continued, looking profoundly uncomfortable, "the hair is a match for yours. I must ask you – it's a formality only – where were you at oh-two hundred hours?"

Archer offered a cynical smile. "Of course I was in my quarters, alone, asleep. Pretty convincing alibi, don't you think?"

"Captain," T'Pol said delicately, her hands behind her back, "Can you think of any reason a strand of your hair would end up on Crewman Vaughn's clothing?"

"Was I, for example, sleeping with her?" Archer's voice grew cold. "Unfortunately, no. I don't even remember the last time I was in the same room with her. You can ask her when she wakes up."

"Crewman Vaughn died of her injuries, just one minute ago," T'Pol said.

"Sir," said Reed, "will you voluntarily relieve yourself of duty until this investigation is over?"

"Sure," Archer replied flatly. "I'll confine myself to quarters if that's satisfactory to you."

"Very well, sir," Reed agreed.

"I am afraid that will not do," interrupted T'Pol. "I do not believe the ship is safe with you able to roam at will. You say you will stay in your quarters, but you lie. You are a fraud." Archer just stared at his First Officer. She bore her usual neutral expression, yet her voice shook with rage. "You are a danger to the universe," she continued, pulling a phase pistol from behind her back. "You must be stopped before more innocent people die."

As she aimed, Archer looked speechlessly at Reed. His security officer had a thoughtful look on his face as he rubbed his bottom lip with his forefinger and nodded in agreement.

T'Pol fired.

And Archer sat straight up in his bunk, clutching his chest and gasping. Panicked, still trapped in the grip of the nightmare, he slid off the bed and onto the floor, choking and coughing. His chest tightened and burned.

As the dream receded like mist dissipating at sunrise, Archer sat shivering on the floor. He pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape.

Porthos whimpered as he trotted over to check on his master. The beagle licked Archer's sweaty face a few times, then insinuated himself onto his lap. Archer just held the dog closely, as if Porthos were the only substantial thing in the world.

The bedside chronometer claimed it was oh-six hundred twenty. He was due on the Bridge in a little over an hour, his customary time to report for duty. He buried his face in Porthos' fur and tried to convince himself that he was not going crazy.


	2. Dangling Between Captain And Friend

_There will be time, there will be time_

_To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;_

_There will be time to murder and create,_

_And time for all the works and days of hand_

_That lift and drop a question on your plate; . . ._

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter One – Dangling Between Captain And Friend**

_Enterprise_ dropped gracefully out of warp, and Jonathan Archer's eyes flew open. He stared at the blackness where the ceiling should be, then reached over, flicked on the lamp, and commed the Bridge

"Archer to Bridge."

Ensign Carpenter, who had the watch during Gamma shift, looked at Crewman D'Agostino. D'Agostino pushed the pin on his chronometer and mouthed, "Twelve point eight seconds."

"Bridge, Carpenter here, Captain." The ensign raised his eyebrows at his companion.

"Why have we gone sub-light?" The captain's voice was gravelly with sleep, but still steady.

"Sir, I'm pretty sure we heard a mayday, so I figured if we came out of warp, we'd be able to pinpoint the source better." He waited, second-guessing his command decision as all young officers-in-training do.

"Okay," agreed Archer. "Do you need me up there?" He was already sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to respond if necessary.

"Uh, no, sir, I believe it's under control for the moment."

"Right, then, let me know if anything develops." He snapped the comm off.

D'Agostino grinned from his position at Communications. "How the hell could he _feel_ that?"

Carpenter shook his head. "That dude's scary. I don't think he ever sleeps."

Archer scrubbed his face with his palms, and glanced at the chronometer on his nightstand. Oh-two hundred hours. Damn. Hours to go before duty, not a snowball's chance of getting back to sleep. For the third night in a row, he found himself contemplating the ceiling of his quarters, wide awake, and not particularly keen to surrender himself to the world of dreams again. Three nights of strange, half-remembered, completely unsettling nightmares. Three days of dreading what the next night would bring. He looked over at Porthos, who, having heard his master's voice, was staring at him expectantly. "Sorry, boy, it's not really time to get up yet. Go back to sleep."

The beagle just waited. He didn't care what time it was; he'd been awakened and that meant it was time to eat.

"Fine," Archer grumbled, "one little snack, and then you have to go back to sleep." He crossed the small room and retrieved a dog cookie, Chef's special vitamin-packed recipe that smelled foul but seemed to appeal to the canine.

Once it became clear that the midnight snack was over, Porthos settled himself back on his doggy bed and laid his muzzle on his paws. Archer lay back down and examined the ceiling some more. He reached over and picked up his personal PADD. He could study some more Vulcan grammar; that ought to put him in a coma in a heartbeat. But his eyes just skipped over the words as his mind wandered. Well, fine, then. He'd just go for a walk, work off some of this nervous energy.

At the door, he paused, looking back at the dog. "Wanna come for a walk?" Porthos just raised one brow and closed his eyes, as if to say, _You _must_ be joking. It's quarter past two in the morning. _

The ship was as silent as it ever was. Only the floor lights were on – energy was at a premium now that they were in the Expanse. Who knew when the next opportunity to refuel would come? The shadows could seem a little eerie, he supposed, to someone who didn't know and love every nook and cranny of the ship the way he did.

He passed two crewmen, who eyed him oddly. He smiled at them and nodded briefly, as if he were just out for a normal constitutional, and then realized that he was still in his pajamas. Okay, maybe it was a little strange for the captain to be wandering the ship in his jammies and barefoot in the middle of the night. He winced, thinking about what the gossip would be tomorrow.

He rounded a corner and saw a familiar figure up ahead. Apparently Commander Tucker couldn't sleep, either. He quickened his step to catch up with his friend. At the sound, the younger man turned around and grinned widely. "Hey, Jon, what's up?"

"I see you can't sleep either," Archer observed. "Got stuff on your mind?"

Tucker laughed. "Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead, Jon."

"Well, _there's_ a lovely thought," the captain said, shaking his head.

"I just like bein' able to walk around the ship at night," Tucker said, resuming his stroll. Archer fell into step beside him. "During duty you're always running here an' there, trying to stay ahead of the current crisis. Or, if you get a quiet moment, you're trying to anticipate the next disaster. But at night, you know, you can just listen and think. You know what I miss about home?" he asked suddenly.

"Besides loud bars and easy women?" Archer joked.

"Well, that, too." Tucker smiled. "I miss just walkin' for miles and miles, all by myself. I used to go walkin' after midnight all the time back on Earth. I miss having time to just . . . think."

Archer considered for a moment. "I miss water. Times like this when I get too wired to sleep, I'd head to the pool and do fifty, sixty laps. Or I'd drive down to the beach and just watch the waves and listen to the ocean. No matter what was on my mind, it was never bigger than the ocean. Kind of the same feeling as looking out at space, but, of course, there's no sound."

They reached the end of the corridor and turned around to go back the way they had come. The impulse power of the ship, which Jon always found to run less smoothly than warp, hummed under their feet. They walked for a while in companionable silence.

"Maybe I'll go see what the kids are doing up on the Bridge," Archer commented finally.

"You'll just make 'em nervous, hoverin' over 'em, Jon," the engineer noted.

"I don't 'hover,'" the captain protested mildly. "I just like to keep them on their toes. You do the same thing to your staff, so don't get all holier-than-thou with me, Trip."

The engineer stopped in his tracks, triumph written all over his face. "Trip? I'm Sim. See, even _you_ can't tell us apart." To Archer's horror, Tucker turned to face him, put his hand to the back of his head, and held out a part of his brain. "I think you might be looking for this?" he inquired politely.

Archer jumped back with an inarticulate cry, arms flailing. Sim smiled Trip's smile. "See? Now, how am I not Trip?" he asked reasonably. Archer backed up until he fell over, pushing himself, crab-like, away from the steadily advancing clone. Pushed up against the corridor wall, Archer watched, horrified, as Sim crouched to place the brain on the floor, then detached his face and laid that down, too. "Oh, can't forget this," the skeletal jaw moved, "the best part." The hand reached inside the uniform and pulled out a beating heart. "Here, Jon," Sim said, grasping the captain's arm and pulling it, "take care of it."

The heart landed in Jon's open hand.

Archer shot straight up in bed, his heels digging into the mattress as he tried to escape. His own heart squeezed so tightly, he thought for a moment he was having a coronary. His cotton tee-shirt was stuck to the cooling sweat on his body, and he shivered. _It was just a dream; it was just a dream_, he muttered to himself, over and over, trying to get his breathing back under control.

He still gripped the PADD in his right hand, the Vulcan language lesson having long since given way to a screen saver. He set it aside carefully. The chronometer gave the time as oh-five thirty-five. Yeah, not going to try that sleep thing again. He rubbed his eyes. He felt like crap.

Porthos didn't stir this time as Archer moved quietly about the cabin, dressing. Showered and shaved, feeling a bit closer to human, he stopped in the Crew's Mess for a double-strength coffee and sat at a corner table to nurse it.

Odd, him having that dream about Sim. He thought he'd made his peace with that decision. As he'd told – okay, yelled at – Sim, he needed Trip on this mission. Not in a million years could he ever have convinced himself that the clone, whom he had watched develop from an embryo to a grown man in a matter of days, was exactly the same as his best friend. Besides, there was no guarantee that the enzyme Sim had researched and found would have worked; the gamble was not worth Trip's life.

Still, he'd seen a side of himself that he hadn't thought existed. For there was no doubt in his mind or heart that, had it come right down to it, he would have shot Sim and dragged him to Sickbay himself in order to save Trip. Not just the mission, but Trip.

He closed his eyes sleepily, then jerked back awake. Wouldn't do to have Alpha shift personnel find their captain snoring in the corner of the Mess, or worse, thrashing and fighting in the midst of yet another nightmare. He drained his cup of the last cold dregs of coffee and grimaced. Tasted like motor oil. He got up and poured himself another.

Two hours and one more cup later, he put the finishing touches on the next few days' duty rosters before disposing of his cup and making his way to the Bridge. His stomach wasn't interested in breakfast. As usual, he was early, and, as usual, T'Pol was already at her station. Ensign Carpenter slid out of the command chair, murmuring, "You have the Bridge, sir."

"Thank you, Ensign," Archer said, not in the mood to try any small talk. "What's new with the mayday?"

"Crewman D'Agostino boosted the gain, sir, and we're scanning for the point of origin. Nothing yet, though."

Archer turned to T'Pol, who, for the moment, had her eyes glued to her console. "Sub-Commander, anything on long range?"

T'Pol looked up briefly. "The mayday code indicates a Nausicaan vessel, Captain, although, as the ensign said, we have not located it yet. There is, however, a wide area of debris approximately seven thousand kilometers from our current position. It is consistent with an explosion of some sort."

"Greeeat," the captain sighed, drawing the word out. Nausicaans were high on his Not My Favorite Beings list, but that didn't mean _Enterprise_ would not respond to a vessel in trouble. "Keep scanning, and let me know if any of that debris starts heading our way." He shrugged his shoulders in his uniform, trying to dispel some of his tension.

Eventually, it was Hoshi, taking her position at the communications console, who caught his attention next. "Captain, I've narrowed down the source of the mayday. It's definitely Nausicaan, and it's still broadcasting. We should be in range for a visual."

"Onscreen," Archer said. The view screen was filled with a dusty pink cloud, in which a small boxy ship drifted. "Any idea what that debris is?"

T'Pol said, "It is, or was, another ship."

"Hail them." Archer gripped the arms of his chair. "This is the starship _Enterprise_. Do you require assistance?"

There was a jumble of words before the translator kicked in. "_Enterprise_, do not come closer. Dangerous cargo aboard."

"Full stop." Archer turned to T'Pol. "Scan it."

After a moment, the Science Officer said, "Sir, it appears that the ship is carrying a cargo of tamirite."

"What's that?" Somehow, he got the feeling that the answer to that question was not going to make his life any easier.

"Tamirite is a substance used in mining and terra-forming operations. It's an explosive which can be extremely unstable and volatile. If not handled carefully, one cubic meter of this substance can produce an explosion equal to a five mega-ton nuclear bomb." Archer glanced over at Reed, the ship's resident explosives expert, who nodded briefly in agreement.

Better and better. "Nausicaan ship, are there any casualties aboard?"

"We have four dead, and three with injuries," the Nausicaan reported.

"There is a hull breach at starboard," T'Pol observed. "At the rate their atmosphere is venting, they have approximately ten hours left."

Docking was out of the question. "Can we evacuate the survivors by shuttle pod?" Archer asked quietly.

"It would be risky," T'Pol answered. "Unless the tamirite is stable, any disturbance to the ship, including landing a shuttle pod, could cause an explosion." She considered. "Tamirite can be rendered mostly inert by gradually lowering the temperature to approximately 79 kelvin. We would have the capacity to do that, if we were allowed access to the ship's environmental program, and if the hull breach were repaired."

"How long would that take?"

"Given the size of the vessel, no more than eight hours."

"Nausicaan ship, can you send us a schematic of your vessel?" To Archer's surprise, the Nausicaan readily agreed, his cooperation confirming T'Pol's assessment that the ship was doomed. Archer activated the comm. "Bridge to Engineering."

"Trip here."

"Meet me up here as soon as you can, will you?"

"On my way."

Further attempts to communicate with the Nausicaan ship were met with silence, although the channel was still open. After a scan, T'Pol reported that the three bio-signs on board were getting weaker. Archer gave Hoshi the conn and assembled the rest of the Bridge crew in his Ready Room. It was a tight fit, but the last thing he wanted was for the Nausicaan crew to overhear any discussion regarding the likely chance of their being blown to atoms. As he waited for his engineer to arrive, a shadow of the nightmare crossed his mind for a moment. He shrugged it off, but could not resist a testing, "Hey, Trip," when Tucker entered the room.

If the engineer thought it odd to be addressed so informally while on duty, he gave no sign. "Mornin', Captain, what's going on?" he asked curiously, and T'Pol filled him in on the situation.

"I guess it's possible to repair the hull breach without blowing the ship to kingdom come," Trip mused. "Then it's just a matter of interfacing with the ship's computer, and lowering the temperature gradually. But since she's drifting in space, the trick'll be gettin' close enough without colliding. Maybe grapple 'er to keep the distance constant."

"Take a steady hand on the rudder," Archer said doubtfully. "It's a tiny margin of error."

"Well, we can't just leave it there," said Reed, "a ticking time bomb in space for anyone to come across."

"I could do it, sir," Ensign Mayweather said quietly. Archer looked at him, then down at the floor, thinking hard. He had no doubt that Travis could hold both ships perfectly still, relatively speaking, for as long as it took to make repairs. The young pilot would balance the starship on the point of a pin if his captain asked him to. Yet, with all the debris from the destroyed ship, whatever that had been, floating around, there was the excellent chance that some random piece of flotsam would jostle the Nausicaan ship and cause the tamirite to detonate.

"Could we evacuate the crew and blow the ship up ourselves?" Archer asked as a last-ditch suggestion.

"The resulting radiation would likely spread to at least a seven light year radius of the blast, " T'Pol said. "There are several worlds, some inhabited, which would be affected."

Archer turned his back and stared unseeingly out the window. "I don't see that we have a choice. Malcolm, take a look at the schematic of the ship and see what we're working with here. Trip, how long do you think you'll need to get your gear ready?"

The commander shrugged matter-of-factly. "Once I know what that hull is made of, gimme a couple hours, I should be ready to suit up."

"Fine, give me an update on your progress at ten-hundred," the captain said unhappily. "I don't want to rush you, but the faster we can get this done . . ." He let the sentence dangle.

"Understood, sir," Trip said, the picture of confidence. The door opened behind the captain, and he slumped, bracing his elbow on the bulkhead and covering his eyes with one hand.

A voice behind him startled him and snapped his spine straight. "Sir," said T'Pol carefully, "may I remind you that there is a greater mission at stake here? The sooner we get to Azati Prime --"

Archer turned around. "I am well aware of the _greater mission_, T'Pol," he bit out. "Not a second goes by that I'm not thinking of the _greater mission_. But I can't very well leave a nuclear bomb drifting in space, can I?"

The Science Officer was silent for a moment, then said, "I disagree with your course of action," Archer gave a _You got any other ideas? _snort, "but I do suggest that _Enterprise_ retreat to a safer distance and that Ensign Mayweather pilot the shuttle pod instead. It is possible that, in the event of an explosion, we may be able to escape a shockwave if we immediately go to Warp Five."

_If she really thought we could outrun it, she would have said so_, Archer thought sourly. "Fine, T'Pol, calculate the minimum safe distance." T'Pol left. Archer took a few deep breaths. He really wished he'd slept better the night before.

At ten-hundred twenty, a restless Archer made his way to Engineering. One of Trip's more endearing traits was his tendency to get so absorbed in his work that he forgot everything else, including appointments. Archer found him sitting on the floor amidst piles of tools and supplies, taking inventory. He glanced up, then looked chagrined as he realized what time it was.

"Sorry, Cap'n," he said, making a move to rise.

Archer waved him back down. "Not a problem. I figured you were still busy. Need a hand?"

Trip motioned to the pile of equipment. "If you don't mind, that stuff's ready to be packed."

Archer began fitting the tools carefully back into their specially-made case compartments. He didn't need to ask why nobody else was helping Trip with his preparations; he knew from long association that Trip preferred to make his final inspection himself. The engineer always wanted to make sure that everything was in its proper place so he could access anything he needed in a hurry. There weren't many people he would trust to help him pack for a mission, especially one this dangerous. The captain was one of them.

Trip glanced up as Archer stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. "Having trouble sleepin'?" he asked, sympathetically. Close up, he could see the shadows beneath Jon's eyes.

"Oh, I can sleep," Archer replied, "I just don't want to."

"Nightmares?"

The captain merely shrugged, unwilling to dignify the problem by saying it out loud.

Trip considered, then grinned mischievously. "Well, it has been a while since you had a shore leave, you know," he commented. At Archer's look, he continued, "Nothing realigns a man's system better than having his ashes well and truly hauled."

"You've discovered this principle to be true," Archer observed dryly, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Whether it was the accuracy of the observation or the Saharan tone of voice the captain used that made him feel cheap, Trip didn't know. He blushed to the tips of his ears, wondering how to dislodge his foot from his mouth. "Well, uh, me and, uh, T'Pol, uh,. . ." he trailed off uncomfortably.

"I would rather cut off my own arm," Archer said severely, "than have this conversation with you right now. Really."

"Right," said Trip. "Doesn't matter anyway. I'm not even sure what's going on between us."

Archer spent a moment dangling between captain and friend, and finally said, "Oh."

Trip let out a sigh, in full confession mode now. "Yeah, she, uh, she _says_ she's just experimentin', but... I dunno."

"Mmm," Archer murmured, then added, with more than a touch of sympathy, "Ouch." His first thought, _Damn, that's gotta hurt_, was followed swiftly by the more pragmatic, _Well, what the hell did you expect? She's a Vulcan scientist._ Finished with his packing, he snapped the case shut and rose. Trip stood, too.

"Yeah, ouch." Trip grimaced. "I shouldn't have said anythin'. Can we, you know, just forget I even brought it up?"

"Brought what up?" Archer asked innocently, clapping his friend on the shoulder. "You ready?"

Trip snorted, "Ready to tap dance on a pile of dynamite? Can't wait."

In the shuttle pod, Travis ran though his flight check, flexing his fingers like a concert pianist about to perform a lengthy concerto. Trip sat stiffly in his EV suit, checking and rechecking his instruments. His helmet sat on the floor near his feet.

"Do the bare minimum, Trip," Archer reminded him, his gruff tone masking how very worried he was. "We're not looking for anything fancy. Just enough of a repair so we can stabilize that tamirite."

Tucker gave him the gimlet eye. "Don't hover, Jon. Nobody wants this over and done with more than me. This'll be the quickest patch job in the history of the world."

Archer leaned over and grasped Travis' shoulder, steadying him with parental sternness. "Travis, you are the best pilot I've ever met, bar none. I know you can do this."

Mayweather looked scared, but smiled shakily. "Thanks, sir. I'll do my best."

"Trip," the captain said, "I'll see you when you get back." He stepped out of the shuttle and took his place behind the airlock door. The outer doors opened, and the shuttlecraft took off smoothly, as if on a Sunday drive.


	3. The Thing About Space

_Do I dare _

_Disturb the universe?_

_In a minute there is time_

_For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse._

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter Two – The Thing About Space **

Commander Tucker scanned the ship as the shuttlepod drew closer. The fissure that was causing the ship to lose its breathable air was tiny, compared to the vessel. Travis worked in silence, eyes wide in concentration. In order for Trip to start repairs, the pilot would have to deliver him as close as possible to the outer hull of the ship, so that Trip could cross the short distance in open space.

The ship was not that big; _Enterprise_ dwarfed it completely even as the starship began to retreat to its safe distance. It was boxy and ungainly, just a space-truck outfitted for long hauls. That it had taken its share of beatings was obvious: burn marks and dents dotted the hull. The shuttlepod circled the entire ship slowly, the pilot and engineer searching for any other defects that might need to be fixed.

"You can attach the tow line there," Travis said, pointing to a slightly raised section of the hull about ten meters from the breach. "Here, let me get in a little closer."

"Don't bump it," Trip warned. Travis just spared him half a second's worth of glare as he throttled down and pulled around. Trip fastened his helmet, blinking against the automatic face-light,and tested his oxygen. "Okay, ready to go," his now-tinny voice said.

On the Bridge, listening in on the communication, Archer tensed, nerves jangly anyway from way too much caffeine and too little sleep. He hated the feeling of helplessness that came whenever an away team didn't include him. He had sent the two men most skilled for the job, but a part of him still wondered if he shouldn't have handled this himself. Both Travis and Trip could be considered essential to their mission to defeat the Xindi; as far as he was concerned, there was no finer pilot or engineer in the galaxy. He'd rescued Travis from that sinister repair station, and he'd made ethical decisions to save Trip's life that he knew were right but which still haunted his subconscious, as last night's dream attested. He was not prepared to lose either of them now.

Trip pulled himself into the airlock and waited for the seal to turn green behind him before opening the outer door. He imagined that he could feel the cold of space, approaching absolute zero, through the material of his EV suit. He didn't especially like spacewalking – he had seen too many science fiction movies in his lifetime. In every single one of them, it seemed, there was always that one poor schmuck who came loose from his mooring and ended up floating silently into eternity.

He heard his breathing get quick and ragged, and made a conscious effort not to hyperventilate.

"You okay, Commander?" Travis asked, watching the jumpy life support readings out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," Trip muttered, "just that first step, it's a doozy." He pushed off with his foot, gripping the tow line, and made a beautiful arc toward the waiting ship. With a flick of his wrist, he engaged his magnetic boots, sticking to the hull of the Nausicaan ship.

"Nice job," Travis said with admiration. "You're clear to attach."

A few clicks later, the line was securely fixed, and Travis turned his full attention to keeping it taut between the ships. Any slack in the line would mean that they were drifting too close to one another, risking collision and explosion. Trip adjusted his boots and made his way to the area of the hull needing repair. He set the case down, stuck it, and went to work. The rent in the hull was about eighteen meters long, not very wide; nothing a little run of the mill soldering couldn't handle. _Piece of cake_, thought Trip.

He focused completely on his task, until even the discomfort of the bulky EV suit faded into the background. This was simple construction, a ship engineer's work at its most basic. After a while, with about a half a meter to go, he said, "Time check."

Travis answered immediately, "Three hours, forty-two minutes. You've got plenty of air."

"Okay, almost done – _what _is_ that_?"

The thing about space is, there are no obstacles – no trees, no mountains, no corners to peer around. And there's no light, usually, except for what you bring with you. So when you look up and see an immense, self-illuminated object coming toward you really fast, it can be unnerving.

Trip saw the object approaching and commenced to lose his shit. "_Travis! Who the hell is THAT_?"

"Commander, can you come inside now?" From the high pitched tone of Travis' voice, the pilot was on the edge of panic himself, fighting against every instinct in him telling him to flee. Trip finished the last few centimeters of welding and began shoving his instruments back into the case. "Commander?" The only response Travis got back from the engineer was a steady, terrified stream of profanity.

"What do you see, Travis," Archer demanded, cursing the distance between _Enterprise_ and the shuttle pod. "Report, Mr. Mayweather!"

"Sir," came Travis' nervous voice, "there is a _big-ass_ ship headed our way."

Archer stood up and took a few paces toward the helm. He wanted to join in Trip's chorus of curse words, but forced himself to remain calm. He motioned to the helmsman and directed her to set a course to intercept. "Take it slow," he cautioned softly, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. In a louder voice, intended for the away team, he said, "We're on our way, we'll be there in . . ." he looked to T'Pol.

"Eleven minutes," she supplied.

"Eleven minutes," he repeated, "so just hold your position, and Trip, get back in the shuttle pod." As they approached, going as fast as they could, but still sub-light, they caught sight of the new vessel. T'Pol began searching through the database to try to identify the ship. Archer could see the orange pinpoint of Trip, holding on for dear life to the grapple line, which he had unfastened from the Nausicaan ship, and which Travis was now, very carefully, retracting into the body of the shuttle pod.

"Hang on, Trip," Archer muttered, not even aware that he had spoken aloud.

Trip was doing his best to comply. His breathing was deafening within the confines of his helmet, a panting, gasping sound which unsettled him even further, punctuated by an impressively imaginative vocabulary. He bumped helmet-first into the hull of the 'pod and reached out with one clumsy glove for the hand hold near the outer door. "Travis!" he yelped, "open the fucking door!" A moment later, the outer hatch slid open, and Trip dove inside.

From his angle on _Enterprise_, Archer couldn't see whether Trip had made it into the pod. All he could hear was the ragged breathing of the engineer, which gradually began to quiet. Then Travis finally had the presence of mind to comm over, "Got him, sir."

Archer fought down his premature relief. He still needed to get them back on board the ship. "Sit tight, gentlemen, while I see who our visitors are." _Enterprise_ glided to within hailing distance of the newcomer, which sat, in relative terms, behind and above the Nausicaan ship and the shuttle pod.

Ten minutes later, there was still no response to any of their hails. Hoshi had tried every language she could think of, down to the simplest binary code. Worse, there was no match in T'Pol's database for the ship. Finally, the Science Officer said, "Sir, the Nausicaan crew still needs to be evacuated. I suggest that we do that now."

Archer eyed the unmoving ship. "Okay, T'Pol, have the Nausicaans transport over – give them the coordinates for the launch bay, and signal the shuttle pod to return." He hit the intercom. "Archer to Security. Reed, report with a team to the launch bay."

It was difficult to establish contact with the Nausicaans; for several precious minutes, they did not answer any of Hoshi's hails. Finally, a weak and groggy voice responded, and indicated that there were three to be rescued.

The Nausicaans used their own transporter to beam over to _Enterprise_, materializing in the great empty space the shuttle pod usually occupied. Any other day, Archer would have been fascinated by the process, not having used the ship's own transporter more than a couple of times himself. Today, however, he merely noted the silvery-blue shimmer as he waited impatiently for the rescued crew to arrive. When they did, they were wearing the Nausicaan version of EV suits, with air tanks attached. These were quickly stripped away and scanned for bio-hazards. There were two males and one female; all three of them were obviously seriously injured and immediately slumped to the ground, barely conscious.

Reed, ever suspicious when aliens were present on the ship, put his security team and the MACOs on alert and notified Phlox of the medical emergency. Not willing to delay the pod's arrival any further, the team prepared to carry the aliens to Sickbay themselves.

"Secure Sickbay," Archer directed his security chief as they retreated past the airlock door. "I'll be along to talk to them in a few minutes." Security hustled the three visitors down the corridor, while Archer and T'Pol waited for the shuttle pod to land. "What the hell happened here?" he wondered aloud, watching with relief as the shuttle bay doors began to open.

Trip couldn't get out of the pod fast enough. Travis barely had time to power down before the commander was up and out the door. He burst out of the bay the second it was equalized, his face white. "Who is that?" he demanded, as if Jon would know.

"They do not answer our hails," T'Pol replied.

"They just appeared out of nowhere, sir," Travis exclaimed, "heading right for us."

"Maybe these Nausicaans can shed some light," Archer said. "I'll be in Sickbay. Trip, T'Pol, start stabilizing that tamirite. If there's going to be trouble, I want that stuff as inert as possible." He turned on his heel and strode down the corridor.

Only one Nausicaan crewmember was still conscious. He reclined on the bio-bed as Phlox completed his diagnostic tests. The doctor stepped toward the door to converse with the captain out of the patient's earshot. "They are all suffering from phaser-like burns, and there is evidence that they have been breathing compromised atmosphere, most likely from a coolant leak or some other mechanical failure."

"Prognosis?"

"Two of them should recover quite nicely. As for the third, it's doubtful." The expression on Phlox's face confirmed that the doctor found a sixty-six percent success rate unsatisfactory.

Archer stepped up to the bed. "I'm Jonathan Archer, the captain of this vessel," he said slowly. "I'm sorry about your ship."

The alien took a deep breath. "I am Markur, first mate of the _Dyonta. _Where is my crew?"

Phlox answered, "I have put them in special chambers designed to help them breathe better. Their lungs are somewhat damaged."

"Can you tell me what happened to your ship?" Archer asked. "Where is your captain?"

"Dead. He was on the other ship."

"What other ship?"

Markur closed his eyes in pain, whether emotional or physical, Archer couldn't tell. "The _Sassh_. We carry tamirite separately, in case it destabilizes and we have to jettison the cargo. We live on the escort ship, along with our families. I had the watch on the _Dyonta_."

"What happened," Archer asked again, now dreading the answer.

"It was a small ship, and fast. There was no time even to arm weapons. Before we knew it, it had docked with the _Sassh_ and they were boarding. The comm was open. I could hear the screams of my crew as they were slaughtered. Not even the children were spared."

"Children?" Archer echoed dully. Before Markur could continue, the door to Sickbay opened and T'Pol entered. Archer gratefully introduced her; it seemed he would need her dispassionate moral support to get through this interview.

"There were twenty-two aboard the _Sassh_; seven were children." The alien paused. "The intruders told us to prepare to be boarded, and when we responded that we were carrying dangerous cargo, they fired on us and knocked out our power. The tamirite containment fields began to fail. Then three of them transported over. They killed two of us immediately, and we retreated under weapons fire to the command pod. Only three of us made it. I knew the moment I saw them that everyone on board the _Sassh_ was dead, or would be soon."

"Who were they?"

"_Askarinoc_," the alien said, and the Universal Translator just skipped over the term. Archer looked at T'Pol, who had stiffened slightly by his side. He knew she could feel his gaze, but she merely lifted an eyebrow and asked Markur politely to continue. The Nausicaan turned his face away from them and said, "I ordered my second to seal off the command pod and flood the rest of the ship with coolant. When the other ship lowered its shields to transport the . . . attackers back, I fired and destroyed both their vessel and the _Sassh_." He closed his eyes. "By then, only the three of us, Lellen, Ketra and I, were left. _Dyonta_ sustained more damage from the explosion."

"It was the only thing you could do to save yourselves," Archer said softly.

Alien eyes turned to him, hot and angry in his spiked, reptilian face. "My wife was on that ship, Captain," the Nausicaan said. "My children, my brothers, _their_ children. What am I going to tell Ketra, my brother's wife, if she ever comes out of your 'special chamber?'"

Phlox stepped forward to spare both his patient and his captain from exploring that question. "We will concern ourselves with that later. You need to get some rest now, hmmm?" The captain took that as his cue to leave for the moment, and gestured to T'Pol to join him outside, leaving a Security team guarding the door.

"You've heard of these attackers before?" he asked as they walked toward the Bridge.

T'Pol took a deep breath. "I have heard stories, mostly. Nobody knows where they are from, what planet or system, because they, to my knowledge, have never identified themselves, and they rarely leave survivors. They are ruthless pirates by all accounts, preying upon lightly armed civilian vessels; they take by force whatever they wish, ships and cargo. They don't accept surrender, and they generally do not leave witnesses. Our Nausicaan guest is one of the few who have lived to describe an actual encounter with them.

"Earth's history speaks of brutal marauders like the Huns, and the Mongols. These pirates are exponentially worse. Every species that has encountered them has a name for them. Vulcans call them _G'Kvam'ir Sratah_. The closest term in your language, Captain, would be," she considered for a moment, "'the Devastators,' or, more precisely, 'The Ones Who Lay Waste to Everything.'"

The captain stopped walking as he reached a comm station. For a moment, he laid his palms against the bulkhead and hung his head. T'Pol heard him say in the quietest of voices, "Damn. Damn." Then he straightened and hit the control with his fist. "Archer to Bridge."

"Reed, here."

He took a deep breath. "Polarize the hull plating. Go to Tactical Alert."

The Bridge practically crackled with tension when Archer and T'Pol returned. Travis had not re-taken the helm yet; he was still inspecting and securing the shuttle pod. In his place sat Ensign Ibrahim, whose hands hovered nervously above the controls, as if expecting to have to jump to warp at a second's notice.

Reed said, "Still no contact, sir. They have some sort of shielding, so our scans aren't giving us too much information."

Archer jerked his head toward the Situation Console at the back of the Bridge. "Send over what you've got."

When they had gathered around the schematic, Reed pointed out the basic engine configuration and weapons system of the silent ship. "I've compared that ship to the Ossarians that attacked us when we first got into the Expanse. It doesn't match. Also, it's not modified like the Tarkalean vessel was, so I doubt it's the same aliens we encountered before." A chill crawled up Archer's spine as he remembered those poor people, both human and Tarkalean, who had somehow been transformed into half-mechanical creatures.

"These are not unknown aliens, Lieutenant," T'Pol said. "You'll find information on them in the Vulcan database." She briefly summarized the facts.

Reed studied the console for a moment, considering. "Captain, how do we know this isn't a trap? These Nausicaans, who are no strangers to piracy themselves, I might add, could very well have set us up for the . . . _Askarinoc_ by sending a distress call."

"You saw those people, Lieutenant," Archer responded doubtfully. "They were barely alive. You really think they would expose themselves to that level of danger on the off chance that a ship might come along?"

"Nausicaans are not exactly known for their honesty. We know that from first hand experience, sir."

T'Pol interjected quietly, "We have personally encountered, as I recall, only a few Nausicaans. To judge an entire species by the actions of a handful would be as illogical as dismissing humans as irrational based on the characteristics of a minority."

It may have been over-sensitivity on his part, Archer thought, but that one felt like a dig. He pressed his lips together to keep from jumping on the comment. _You are a danger to the universe._ He pushed the accusing voice out of his head.

"If they were prisoners, perhaps they would have been willing to attract a ship in exchange for their lives," Reed argued some more.

T'Pol shook her head, a motion which struck Archer as incongruously human under the circumstances, and replied, "The Nausicaans would know that any ship coming to their rescue would undoubtedly be boarded and captured, and everyone on board would be killed. It is unlikely the Askarinoc would spare anyone, not even purported allies."

"But what the hell are they doing in the Expanse?" Archer mused.

"If your main goal were piracy and conquest," T'Pol offered, "would you remain in a region of space where species have begun to trade with and protect each other, or—"

"Or take your chances in the Wild, Wild West," Archer finished grimly. "T'Pol, download everything you have in the Vulcan database that can help us. Then, we'll go have another chat with our friend, Captain Markur. We need to know everything we can about these 'Devastators' if we're going to have any chance at all against them."

In the three hours it took Archer to view and digest the eyewitness accounts and log data from doomed ships attacked by the Devastators, the ship hanging off _Enterprise's_ bow neither moved nor signaled. The crew remained on Tactical Alert, waiting for the other figurative shoe to drop. In his Ready Room, Archer bleakly reviewed recording after recording, some with audio, some silent video, of crews and passengers mercilessly killed by dark-clothed, almost shadowy figures. The video streams flashing across his screen were highly disturbing; as Markur had said, the attackers spared no one, no matter how much a victim begged in whatever language. A few intruders were killed by the mostly unskilled defenders – lucky shots, generally; their bodies immediately shimmered green and disappeared. No wonder the Askarinoc remained such a mystery; they left no physical evidence of themselves behind. The impassive eye of each ship's monitoring camera captured it all, though, recorded the last moments of young and old alike, until finally the log was jettisoned into space by some desperate hand.

It was worse than the log account Soval had shown Archer of crazed Vulcans killing themselves and each other in the Expanse. There, the horror had been manifested in the sight of normally logical, emotionless beings, reduced or somehow driven to madness and uncontrolled violence by an aberration of the universe. But here, there was a sense of deliberation, of mission, a mindset that mercy was not an option. Archer watched and listened as a female alien pleaded in a language he didn't recognize but could readily understand, holding an infant in her arms. The attacker paused, flung back his or her phase-rifle on its shoulder strap, and then drew a large dagger-like blade, running the woman and baby through with one stroke.

He shut it off with a shaking hand. For the first time since the Xindi mission had started, Jonathan Archer felt fear. The universe had upped the ante. It was not just a race against time to stop the Xindi weapon anymore; now, there was an obstacle in his path he was not certain he could overcome. For if the Devastators took _Enterprise_, Earth was lost. There was no back up plan. There was no cavalry. There was only _Enterprise_, with one hundred souls on board. _I don't have to tell you that failure's not an option, Jon,_ Admiral Forrest had said gravely as he'd signed the orders sending _Enterprise _into the unknown. Some days, it seemed failure was the only, the inevitable, option.

_I'm afraid, Dad._

_Good. Fear keeps you alive, son. You don't ever want to serve with anyone who doesn't feel fear, because that person doesn't have any sense. _

_Vulcans don't experience fear, Dad. _

_Sure they do; they just call it caution. But you have something else: courage. Courage is doing what needs to be done_ despite _your fear. Have courage, Jon._

Archer commed T'Pol. "What's the status of the tamirite?"

"So long as the material stays at the current temperature or below, its volatility is point three one percent."

He rolled his eyes. This woman and her decimal points. "Meaning?"

"It is, statistically speaking, completely inert."

"Good. Launch a warning beacon and prepare to resume our previous heading, Warp Three."


	4. The Magical Properties of Coffee

_I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,_

_And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,_

_And in short, I was afraid._

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter Three – The Magical Properties of Coffee**

Archer took a deep breath before opening the doors to Sickbay. _Enterprise_ was six hours past the Nausicaan ship, with no sign of pursuit by the Askarinoc on long-range scanners. There was no comfort in that; he had the uneasy feeling that they were being tracked.

Since they had gone to warp, he had combed through the sensor data closely, convinced that there was something there. It was nothing he could put his finger on, or explain to T'Pol or Reed, but he _knew_ it was there, like a shadow moving just at the corner of his eye. Every time he turned his head to look at it straight on, however, it was gone. Perhaps now, on top of everything else, he was starting to see phantoms and gremlins. Or, worse, maybe he was not.

He was nervous, too, about leaving the Nausicaan ship full of tamirite behind, but _Enterprise_ had no containment field capable of keeping the substance inert. If they were caught under enemy fire, having the tamirite onboard would make destruction of _Enterprise_ a certainty. Perhaps it would _please, oh, please _drift safely there until the Nausicaans could retrieve it. More likely, though, the way his choices always seemed to come back to bite him, he'd probably just given some unpleasant alien out there the means to ignite a nuclear holocaust. _You are a danger to the universe._

He rubbed a hand over his gritty eyes. Maybe he would take advantage of the lull, however long it lasted, and get some sleep. The door swished open.

Hoshi was standing between the two bio-beds, translating the conversation between the Nausicaans and Phlox. From the sad expression on the young woman's face, Archer knew they were discussing the destruction of the _Sassh_. Hoshi held the UT unused in her hand; it could not convey the sympathy contained in the linguist's voice. The Nausicaan woman, _Ketra_, he remembered randomly, eyed him as he approached, and seemed to ask a question of him.

"'Where is my husband,'" Hoshi translated. She added, "She's been asking that over and over, sir."

Archer sighed. "I'm sorry," he began, but Ketra repeated her question, more urgently. The captain opened his hands helplessly. "There was nothing we could do . . ."

He had no time to finish the sentence. In a flash, Ketra launched herself off the bed and straight at him, screaming. He lost his footing and went down as she slammed into him and did her best to tear his head from his neck. His hands circled her wrists as she clawed at his face, and her knees drilled into his solar plexus. He felt a pocket of his uniform give way. Other hands tried vainly to pry her off of him. The shouting and keening jumbled in his ears. He couldn't make sense of any of it. Finally, the woman's body relaxed under a powerful sedative and she was hauled away by the security officer's arms.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Phlox jabbered, grasping his elbow to help him up. Archer jerked his arm away, rolling to his hands and knees, head down, trying to regain his composure. He could hear the security officers struggling the woman into restraints on the bio bed. Although sedated, she continued to wail. The words hung in the air, untranslated; with detachment, he decided they must be proper names, perhaps a roll call of her dead family. He pushed himself to his feet.

Phlox stood an arm's length away, his voice barely audible over the din. "Captain, I'm sorry. She has just been told that the _Sassh_ was lost, and that the third crewmember we rescued didn't make it. There was nothing I could do."

"I'm sure," he cleared his throat, "I'm sure you did your best." Archer turned back toward the wailing woman, who was still struggling against the soft restraints. Markur appeared to be doing his level best to comfort her. Hoshi stood by the bed also, looking shaken but speaking in soothing tones.

"I don't dare sedate her any further, given her weakened physical condition," Phlox said, by way of explanation. Archer just looked at him, as if to say, _Seems plenty strong to me_.

The wailing went on and on at a vocal frequency that made Archer's eardrums throb until he couldn't think. He recalled watching news footage of a Middle Eastern funeral procession, and hearing the desperate ululations of a distraught woman about to bury her child after some natural disaster. The sound blended with the Nausicaan woman's cries and beat against the inside of his head. He glanced down at his ripped uniform and muttered, "I'll just . . . I'll be in my quarters." Before he started screaming himself, he turned quickly and left Sickbay.

Crewmen stopped and pressed themselves against the bulkheads as the captain stalked down the corridors toward his quarters, his face like a thundercloud. If he noticed any of them, he gave no sign. He reached his quarters and slapped the door control forcefully. One glare at Porthos sent the dog back to his pallet. He left his clothing where it fell and stepped into the hottest shower he could stand. After a moment, the shakes began, despite the heat, and he slid down to sit on the shower stall floor, knees drawn up, hands balled at his temples.

_Seven million humans. Trip's baby sister. Did Trip's mother wail for her daughter like that? I can't do this. I can't. This is not what I signed on for. All I wanted was . . . That Xindi monster wondered how many were children. God, I gotta get us out of this place . . . How can you murder children?. . .Who knew there were so many . . . bad guys? I can't save the universe. . . I'm not strong enough . . . _

Archer raised his face to the scalding spray and let the salt water flow down the drain.

x x x

Trip was back in Engineering, recovering slowly from his spacewalk scare. He looked up from the open access panel he was replacing to find T'Pol watching him. She had a way of gliding into the vicinity and standing there silently until a person noticed her. He had no idea how long she'd been loitering. When Trip was absorbed in a mechanical problem, she could stand and wait for his attention for as much as fifteen minutes at a time.

"May I speak with you for a moment, Commander?" she asked politely, indicating with a tilt of her head the closet Trip laughingly referred to as his office. He screwed in the last bolt, securing the panel, and rose, wiping his hands on the thighs of his uniform. Leading the way, he stepped into the small pocket of peace amidst the chaos of Engineering.

"Are you going to write me up for language unbecoming an officer, because of my little freak out?" Trip was still a bit embarrassed by the whole episode, now that he was safely back on _Enterprise_.

"That was not my intention," T'Pol answered gravely. "It was an understandable reaction, given the circumstances." He searched her features for any trace of irony. There was none. "No, I wish to discuss an issue relating to the captain."

"Oh," Trip said, instantly serious.

T'Pol clasped her hands behind her back. "Have you noticed that the captain has lately become more unsettled and moody?"

"He's been like that for a while, T'Pol," Trip answered, "ever since we got into this damned Expanse."

The First Officer nailed him with an impatient look. "For the past several days, the captain has also seemed fatigued, depressed, and unfocused. He has not been eating. He appears to have lost weight. In fact, Chef mentioned that the captain has not taken a meal in his Mess in over a week, and that every tray sent to the Ready Room has come back virtually untouched." She inclined her head slightly. "I had suspected that it might be an after-effect of the Insectoid toxin, but the doctor's scans have ruled it out as a cause."

Trip opened his mouth to defend the captain, an automatic response, then stopped himself. "Well," he said slowly, finding it difficult to bring up a conversation that the captain may have intended to be confidential, "he did tell me this morning that he hasn't been sleeping." The look on T'Pol's face, before she controlled it, clearly said, _Great, another insomniac_, but Trip went on. "He said he _could_ sleep, but he just didn't want to. I think he's having nightmares, but he wouldn't admit it."

"But sleep is a necessary biological function," T'Pol pointed out. "A human cannot simply refuse to sleep."

"You're forgetting the magical properties of coffee," Trip replied. "It's like this. A person can want to fall asleep, but the body won't relax enough to achieve it. Like me, before neuropressure. I was dead tired, but just couldn't go to sleep. Right?" T'Pol nodded once. "Now, the cap'n, I bet, would drop right off to sleep if he stopped moving long enough. But when he does sleep, he might have awful nightmares, bad dreams where your subconscious tortures you and you wake up upset and scared and just as tired as you were before you went to bed. But the images stay with you.

"So, if you don't want the nightmares, you make yourself stay awake. You drink a lot of coffee, you exercise, you work. After a while, you lose your appetite, you find that you can't deal with little everyday things, you start to lose it. I think that's what's happening to the cap'n."

T'Pol considered the disturbing images that had haunted her since her initial exposure to trellium on the _Seleya_, apparitions she kept at bay only through careful and consistent meditation. Captain Archer did not meditate; no wonder he was becoming unbalanced. "Why does he not ask Dr. Phlox to sedate him?"

Trip sighed. Sometimes it was hard for T'Pol to grasp that the logical answer didn't always work with humans. "Well, first of all, if you're having nightmares, the last thing you want to be is drugged. Chances are, the drugs would make them worse, and it's harder to wake yourself up when a dream gets too intense, if you're sedated." He held her gaze to make sure she understood, then went on. "Plus, we're talking about the cap'n here. This is not a guy who can say, okay, I'm going to go hibernate for a while; you watch out for the ship. _Enterprise_, her crew, we're his life. He would walk through fire for us. A person like the cap'n doesn't lay down that responsibility, ever, and he doesn't delegate. You and I can talk to each other; I can hash stuff out with Malcolm. Everybody on this ship has someone they can confide their fears in. Except Jon.

"Earth is depending on him, in the most literal way possible. Talk about the weight of the world on your shoulders. That's exactly how he sees it. _His_ shoulders. He's not going to turn to one of the crew and say, 'Here, you hold this burden for awhile. I'm gonna go take a little nap.'"

T'Pol watched concern and pain chase each other across the engineer's face. She was silent for a moment, thinking. Finally, she said, "Clearly, the captain is breaking under the pressure. The one thing he is convinced he cannot do is precisely what is required."

"_You_ wanna be the one to tell him that?" Trip raised his eyebrows, imagining the explosion that would ensue if either of them suggested that Jon relieve himself of duty for a while.

"No," demurred T'Pol, "but Phlox might."

x x x

The doctor stroked his chin thoughtfully. He had suspected something like this when he had seen the captain earlier. He'd thought that Captain Archer's reaction to the Nausicaan woman's outburst – bolting in near panic – was uncharacteristic, to say the least. Now, Commander Tucker's and Sub-Commander T'Pol's observations confirmed his suspicions.

"Unfortunately," he told them, "I would need proof that his ability to command has been compromised. I cannot medically relieve him of duty, or insist that he do so himself, unless his judgment has been impaired. There is no sign that he is laboring under an alien influence," the doctor tactfully did not add, _again_, "and he has not given any orders which could be construed to be contrary to the crew's well-being."

"I suppose it would be unethical to slip him a mickey," Trip mused.

"Hmmm, yes, you suppose correctly," the doctor responded, giving the commander a hard look. "It is only a matter of time, however, before the captain begins to show the signs you are looking for: paranoia, uncontrolled violence, other indicia of psychosis. Document those, and I can relieve him of duty."

"I'm not looking to lock him up in the loony bin," Trip said worriedly, "I just want the guy to get some rest before he collapses or kills himself."

"Chances are, he will recognize the need for sleep long before he becomes psychotic, Commander. It may take some coaxing, but Captain Archer will undoubtedly do the right thing." The Denobulan called up some medical records on his desktop computer. "There are some natural remedies I can give him to allow for a dreamless sleep, when he is ready to take them."

"Well, thanks for your time, Doc," Trip said, heading toward the door. T'Pol followed, more slowly. "I suppose if all else fails, we can always stun him with a phase pistol again."

x x x

T'Pol approached the table where the captain was sitting by himself, pushing a piece of apple pie around a plate with his fork. It was what Commander Tucker often called "the wee hours of the morning." The Mess was otherwise deserted. She tucked her PADD beneath her elbow, and held her mug of tea with two hands, warming her palms in response to the human-cool atmosphere of the room. "Do you mind if I join you?" she asked, employing the roundabout human way of seeking permission to sit.

He half-stood, gesturing to the empty chair opposite his. "Not at all," he answered, and then, somewhat uncharacteristically, turned his attention back to his plate. There was an open thermos of coffee on the table, and the strong smell was a little off-putting. The captain was dressed in a white short-sleeved tee-shirt and casual slacks; she knew he had officially gone off-duty several hours ago. Oddly, his hair was mussed, an atypical look for the usually fastidious man, as if he had just gotten out of bed.

They sat in silence for a moment, Archer displaying no curiosity at all about why T'Pol might have approached him. Finally, T'Pol laid the PADD on the table, turned it upside down, and slid it across the surface. "I believe I have found an appropriate place to deposit the Nausicaan crew, as you requested."

Archer looked up at her, unfocused. "To what?"

She pointed to the schematic on the PADD. "There is a trading post, approximately a day from here at Warp Three. It's an inhabited moon, with a fair amount of traffic. The Nausicaans can disembark there."

"You think there's a transceiver there, or a beacon so they can contact their homeworld?" Archer glanced at the diagram. For a moment, it was a blue blur in front of his eyes. He had been staring at too many of the tiny screens lately.

"If there isn't one, they will undoubtedly be able to negotiate transport, or perhaps even contact another Nausicaan freighter to retrieve them."

"I don't want to just abandon them in the middle of nowhere," Archer muttered. "They've been through enough as it is." He rubbed his eyes.

"Captain, I understand your concern, but, as you know –"

"Don't you lecture me about the mission, T'Pol," Archer snapped. "I realize this will take us even further off schedule and off course, but it's the _human_ thing to do." He shoved the pie to the side, as if he blamed the pastry for their current predicament. "These people have lost everything, their ship, their cargo, their families . . . children. I don't intend to leave them stranded on some outpost, unless there's a chance they can get home."

"I did not mean to suggest that you should," T'Pol answered mildly.

The captain sighed and looked down. He placed his elbows on the table, and gripped the hair at his temples with both hands, as if preparing to pull it out by the roots. T'Pol steeled herself and ventured, "Captain, are you feeling quite all right?"

He raised his eyes to hers, and she could see how reluctant he was to answer the question. She wondered for a moment if he might lie to her. Finally, he responded, "I had a dream, earlier, that I killed Charles."

T'Pol had a strong suspicion that he did not mean the Chief Engineer. "The Vissian?" she inquired, her eyebrow rising slightly.

"She was begging me to let her stay aboard _Enterprise_. I said no."

T'Pol said firmly, "You made the right decision under the circumstances."

Archer ignored her comment. "She was pleading for asylum, and so I reached out, took her by the throat, and choked her to death." There was no self-pity in his tone, only a strange detachment.

"Captain," T'Pol said slowly, "if you had known that the -- that Charles would kill itself, would you have made a different choice?"

"It's not that simple, T'Pol."

"Would you?"

He gave her a long look, then smiled bitterly. "No, T'Pol, I would have done exactly the same thing. Which just proves that in twenty-twenty hindsight, I'm still a shit." _You must be stopped before more innocent people die. _He abused his pie with his fork some more, then swirled the last inch of coffee in his cup and swigged it down. The acidity of the liquid didn't even bother him anymore. He grimaced and began to pour yet another cup from the thermos, fumbling with the lid.

"It was the right decision," T'Pol repeated. "You cannot impose your will upon another culture, even if you believe its values to be unjust. You may not fully understand their reasons for perpetuating such a system."

"Tell that to Dred Scott," Archer retorted. Then, as the Vulcan gave a questioning look, he added, "In human history, that was exactly the excuse people always gave to justify returning slaves to their owners." He hunched his shoulders. "Even when I make what you'd call the _right _decision, people die."

"That may very well be the case," T'Pol observed, "however, you have, to my knowledge, never intentionally hurt any being. It has been my experience that preserving life is a priority for you."

Archer snorted. "No, I don't hurt them; I just torture them. Tell me, T'Pol, did you come to this conclusion before or after I served you up to Tolaris to be violated? _And_ infected with a terminal disease, to boot."

"It is not logical for you to attempt to take responsibility for the actions of Tolaris, or any other person not under your control." There was a slight tremble in the Vulcan's voice, and he heard the lie underneath her calm assertion.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then rested his fists on the table. "Everything that happens aboard _Enterprise_ is my responsibility. My fault."

She placed a hand on his arm. He looked at her in surprise, and she immediately removed it. "Perhaps," she said carefully, "you would feel better if you slept, Captain."

"Sleeping isn't agreeing with me lately," Archer replied, his eyes on his cup. "Not all dreams are pleasant, as you might recall."

"There are Vulcan meditation techniques I could show you which may relax you enough to keep the dreams at bay," she offered.

"What are you, the ship's good time girl now?" he snapped, then instantly regretted it. "I'm sorry, that was way out of line. I apologize." He swallowed some coffee, unable to meet her gaze, aware that he was likely becoming more obnoxious with every caffeinated sip.

T'Pol took a moment to drink her own tea and to gather herself. Then she put the cup down and said, "Give me your hand, please."

Without thinking, he held his hand out, palm up, as if ready to have his fortune told. She traced a finger from the base of his wrist to the joint of his index finger, across the sensitive palm, producing a sensation so profound, so overwhelming, that Archer wanted to weep, just lay his head down on the table and sob his heart and soul out. Instead, he snatched his hand away and stood abruptly. Taking a pace backward, his hand curled into a fist, he said, "Don't -- I don't want you to touch me."

T'Pol blinked at his reaction. Then her face composed itself, and she retorted coldly, "I told you, Pa'naar Syndrome is not contagious."

Archer frowned and leaned forward across the table until his lips were millimeters away from her elegantly pointed ear. "Go to hell," he whispered. He turned on his heel and stomped out of the Mess.


	5. In For A Penny

_Time for you and time for me,_

_And time yet for a hundred indecisions,_

_And for a hundred visions and revisions,_

_Before the taking of a toast and tea._

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter Four – In For A Penny**

It had all started when Archer mentioned, off-handedly, that he would be piloting the shuttle to take the two Nausicaan survivors to the small trading post T'Pol had found. Like most such facilities, it was a stopping point for scores of different species, any one of which might be persuaded, for the right price, to assist the Nausicaans in contacting their own people. Archer was prepared to pay a small fee on the Nausicaans' behalf if necessary; they had a cargo hold of trellium-D they weren't using, he reasoned.

Summoning Reed to his Ready Room, he ordered the lieutenant to put together a security team to transport the aliens to the surface. Suspicion made Reed ask, "Who's piloting?" He thought he knew the answer already.

He was right. "I am," Archer said, walking over to the cabinet where he kept his log discs.

"If I may, sir, I would suggest a different pilot, Mayweather, perhaps."

Archer stopped. "Is there a problem, Lieutenant?" he inquired coldly.

Reed knew that Archer was beginning to percolate. He rarely ever called Reed by his rank, and only when he was about to disagree with whatever the Tactical Officer was proposing. He sighed inwardly, finally deciding just to go for it. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted," Archer said tightly.

"Sir, there is no reason for the captain of this vessel to be a member of this away team. This is not a first contact, nor is it a diplomatic mission. We are simply escorting two aliens to an unknown facility. Your presence is not necessary." The captain stiffened. Nothing like being told that you weren't wanted, and by a subordinate, too. Reed went on, the cadence of his speech quickening as he sought to forestall the imminent explosion. "This is nothing that the MACOs and I cannot handle. Besides, it is better for security altogether if you were not there to distract us."

_Well, that could have been said better,_ Reed admitted to himself, wincing inwardly, _but you can't unring a bell, now can you._

Archer's eyes narrowed and his face grew even colder. He squared his shoulders. "Distract you?"

Another cliché suggested itself to Reed. _In for a penny, in for a pound._ "Sir, this outpost is unknown to us, with any number of species we've never encountered before. I don't know what the layout of the place is, and I don't have any information on how friendly or how hostile the beings down there might be. Our attention needs to be fully on getting in and getting out. You have a tendency to get involved in situations that could compromise that simple objective." _And bringing those scantily-dressed situations back on board with you_, he thought but didn't add.

Having given permission for free speech, Archer couldn't very well rescind it now. But he could yell. "You're saying, _Lieutenant_," and he stressed the rank now, as if to imply that it could become a temporary title, "that you don't have the time or the patience to babysit your captain on an away mission?"

_Penny. Pound._ "I'm saying that you make it difficult, if not impossible, for me to do my _job_,_ which is to protect you_!" Reed's voice actually echoed off the metal deck.

A well-rested Archer might have recognized the absurdity of the situation, and laughed ruefully at the sight of his very proper English officer clenching his fists tightly as if about to have a temper tantrum. A less-stressed Archer might also have recognized the truth of Reed's words, that he had too much at stake to go larking on an away mission. An earlier Archer might have applauded the fact that Reed had finally unbent sufficiently to challenge his commanding officer. Instead, this right-now Archer stepped closely up to his Tactical Officer, deliberately crowding his personal space, towering over him to the point of bending his neck to get eye-to-eye. To his credit, Reed neither flinched nor stepped backward.

"You. Are. Dismissed." Archer said through clenched teeth. Reed waited a beat, just to make sure it didn't seem like he was fleeing, then left the room. As he headed toward the Armoury, he hoped that the captain was using "dismissed" in the colloquial sense, as in, "Get going," rather than in the permanent sense, as in, "You are demoted, fired, and get the hell off my ship."

He figured it must be the former when the shuttle pod left two hours later with Travis at the helm.

If he had asked Archer at that moment, the answer might have been quite different. Once the shuttle pod launched, however, Archer threw himself onto his tiny couch, flipping on his PADD to try to make sense of the shadow readings. It was there, with him curled up like a pretzel, waiting like a dad for a teenaged son to return home with the family car after a date, that sleep overtook him, and seized the opportunity to torment him some more.

He fell asleep at twenty-three hundred hours, uncomfortable but optimistic that, since he was so tired he literally could not keep his eyes open, he would sink into a dreamless, formless sleep.

He was right, for a while, until the Nausicaan woman began to scream, as she clawed the skin off of his face in long ribbons. Beside her, Hoshi shrieked at him as well, in high-pitched Japanese, which he could nonetheless understand, "_Murderer! Fraud! How many more of us are you going to kill_?" He tried desperately to rise from his command chair, which perversely had grown tentacles that attacked him and tried to keep him seated. His eyes sought out T'Pol, who looked at him from her science station with a zombie's face, open sores oozing green across her cheeks. Travis lay dead, burned and stiff, at his feet. Struggling, he looked up at the view screen and watched in horror as the ship, unpiloted, careened at Warp Five toward an unsuspecting Earth.

He awoke on impact. And headed to the gym where he ran twenty-four kilometers on the treadmill.

Now, exhausted but grateful for the endorphins produced by the strenuous exercise, he made his way back to his quarters, gripping one of his ubiquitous PADDs. Shirt still damp with sweat from his workout, Archer strode down the corridor toward his quarters. By ship's time, it was four o'clock in the morning, an hour he had grown to know quite well.

"Bridge to Captain Archer."

The captain sighed. _Please let this be good news. Or, at least, not bad news._

"Archer."

There was a surprised pause. Apparently, the ensign covering communications had expected him to be in his quarters. "Sir, the shuttle pod has returned."

"Thanks. Archer out." He ran a hand through his wet hair and debated showering before meeting Reed. No, he'd better do it now, so the lieutenant could make his report and then get some rest.

He wasn't looking forward to this conversation, not after the blow-out with his Tactical Officer. Part of his mind recognized that the lieutenant had a valid point; the rest of him still bristled at being criticized so harshly.

Now, thoroughly exhausted, anxious, and embarrassed, the captain took ten deep breaths before stopping at the door to the shuttle pod bay.

Reed looked every inch the cool professional as he inventoried the weapons the away team had taken with them to the trading post. He acknowledged his sweaty, drained-looking commanding officer with a brief nod, eyes on the last pistol as he snapped it into its holding case. "Sir."

"How did it go?" Archer asked.

"There was a fairly sophisticated subspace communications platform there. It only cost us a few kilograms of trellium, and Captain Markur was able to contact a ship about six light years away. They should be picked up within the week." Reed straightened. "Captain Markur asked me to convey, again, his gratitude to you, sir."

"Glad it worked out okay," Archer commented. He paused, gathering his thoughts for this difficult next step.

Reed kept his eyes on his work. He knew what was coming – or what _should _be coming – next, and was rather looking forward to it. He was military enough to know that he was not entitled to an apology, but familiar enough with Archer's command style to know that he deserved one anyway.

Archer cleared his throat. "Look, Lieutenant, about . . . before. You were right. I was wrong. I apologize."

"Very well, then, sir," Reed responded blandly. He locked the last case.

"There's one more thing, Malcolm," Archer said as Reed turned to leave. "I want all security personnel to wear sidearms, whether on or off duty, until further notice. MACOs, too, so inform Major Hayes." Archer had decided, after the ship's near-mutiny, that all orders for the MACOs would go through the Tactical Officer, so that there would be no question about the chain of command.

"Sir?" Reed said. "Do you think that's really necessary, considering the fact that there aren't actually any aliens aboard at present?"

Archer's eyes took on an intense look. "I know you think I'm imagining things, but I _know_ they're out there, just beyond our sensors. If they board _Enterprise,_ they will wipe us all out, and Earth is doomed." He continued in a strangely dreamy, disembodied voice, which caused an icy finger of fear to trail down Reed's spine. "They're _stalking _us, Malcolm, playing with us, and when they think we've let our guard down, they will make their move."

"Sir," Reed ventured carefully, "considering the fact that these pirates typically attack civilian ships, they may decide to leave Enterprise alone. If they've scanned us, they know, at least roughly, how much weaponry we're carrying." Archer didn't respond, so Reed tried again. "Sir, isn't it possible that you are, er, overreacting just a bit?"

The glare Archer sent his way should have turned the Tactical Officer to stone. He was still the captain of this ship, dammit, and his word was law. "I want all of your people armed," the captain ordered in a glacial tone, "and the MACOs, too. See to it." Without another word or a backward glance, Archer strode out the door and down the corridor.

Archer had been standing at his window for some time, trying to catch hold of his angry thoughts, when the door chime to his quarters rang. "Come in," he said, tiredly, not at all surprised to be disturbed at this ridiculous hour.

Trip entered, carrying his personal PADD. Archer eyed it, not sure he was in any frame of mind to analyze more data, make more strategic decisions. He turned away, stifling a sigh, and sat down on the bed. Trip stood at parade rest just inside the door. "What is it?"

It was a moment before Trip spoke. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" That got Archer's attention; he had known Trip way too long to have to give him the green light to speak his mind. It was a measure of how far apart they had grown that such a request could ever even leave Trip's mouth.

"You don't need my permission, you know that, but go ahead." Archer braced himself.

Trip took a deep breath. "Cap'n - Jon, I'm worried about you. I'm worried about your health, your mental health. You look like you haven't slept in days; you don't eat. Now, I - I understand that maybe you don't want to talk to me or, you know, be my friend anymore, but, it's not just me that's noticing how tense you are."

"What makes you think I don't want to be your friend anymore?" Hurt showed on Archer's face.

"When was the last time you and I really talked?" Trip asked gently. "We used to have this, this _bond_, but nowadays, it's like you can't even look at me."

"Since when don't I look at you?"

"Since Charles," Trip replied sadly, and Archer felt hollow. He scrubbed his face with his palms as he tried to formulate a response. When he lowered his hands, Trip was gone. He was alone.

He jumped up and spun in a tight circle, looking around the room. The door to the corridor was closed; he would have heard it open when Trip left. He glanced at Porthos, sleeping comfortably. No way the beagle would have remained asleep if Trip had come to visit.

He sat shakily back down on the bed. _I am going mad, _he thought, and clenched his hands into tight fists.

x x x

T'Pol stood stiffly, even for a Vulcan, and considered the situation. She had taken the unusual step of convening a meeting of the most senior officers, in Sickbay, without the captain's knowledge or presence. Now she took careful note of Lieutenant Reed's words and tone as he reported the incident with Captain Archer, trying to determine whether there was actually cause for concern, or whether this was simply human emotionalism creating a false crisis. As she listened, and thought about her own interactions with the captain lately, she became more and more convinced. Their commanding officer was in trouble.

And now, on top of the ongoing tension of the Xindi mission and this new, phantom threat, the crew was utterly unnerved by the sight of security officers and MACOs patrolling the corridors, fully armed.

"Is the captain in any physical danger, Dr. Phlox?" T'Pol asked when Reed was finished.

The Denobulan twitched. "Well, from the scans I took at a distance, his serotonin level is abnormally low, from lack of sleep. Both his heart rate and blood pressure are elevated, putting him at higher risk for a sudden stroke. It's likely that he is experiencing a persistent, medium-grade headache, and I have noticed that his coordination is starting to suffer."

"There's got to be some way to approach him, a way to suggest that he step down even for a day or two without the cap'n, you know, blowin' a gasket," Trip said.

"I think no matter how you say it, he's likely to hand you your head," Reed retorted. "Although, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if he attacked one of us. Then I could take him into custody for his own protection - and ours."

"I am certain we can find a resolution which does not involve provoking the captain to violence," T'Pol responded dryly.

"There's no way he's _not_ going to consider this a vote of no-confidence," Trip said.

"Or a challenge to his authority," Reed added. "Especially after . . ." He let the sentence die away, but felt Trip go utterly still beside him. They may have been able to convince the captain once that relieving him of duty by means of a phase pistol shot to the chest was the best thing for the ship and her crew, but there was no alien toxin to hide behind this time. And if Archer thought they were ganging up on him simply because they disagreed with his handling of the present situation, they could all find themselves confined to quarters, leaving a sleep-deprived, increasingly paranoid, less-than-rational captain in charge.

T'Pol stifled the surge of impatience. "Relieving himself of duty is the logical course of action. The captain will see this once he has been apprised of all of the facts."

"The cap'n isn't Vulcan, T'Pol," Trip pointed out, arms crossed.

T'Pol didn't need that unfortunate reminder. She headed purposefully toward the door. "I believe the captain is in his Ready Room. Shall we go?"

"'That which thou doest, do quickly,'" Trip muttered, bringing up the rear.

Archer rose with some surprise from his desk as his senior officers filed into the Ready Room. The office was tiny, and it was a tight fit for five people.

T'Pol took the lead, as if she had drawn the short straw. "Captain, we are concerned about your physical and mental well-being. You have not slept in several days. Chef reports that you are not eating. Your behavior has become erratic. Your obsession with the Askarinoc has reached puzzling levels, to the detriment of our primary mission of finding and stopping the Xindi weapon.

"No other personnel has seen any sign of the alien ship. Long range sensors show nothing in the vicinity. Further, the anxiety level of the crew has risen significantly since you ordered that all security personnel wear sidearms. The entire crew is worried, both about you and about the mission."

Archer turned to look out the Ready Room window, stumbling slightly over the desk chair. "_Another_ mutiny," he laughed mirthlessly. "Hasn't even been a month since the last one. This must be a Starfleet record." _I do not believe the ship is safe with you able to roam at will. You are a fraud._

"Cap'n," Trip put in quietly, "Dr. Phlox says he can give you something to make the nightmares go away," at this, Archer sent a bitter, betrayed glare over his shoulder, "so you can – "

"Shut up, Trip," Archer responded softly. "Just – stop talking." He nodded once, as if confirming something for himself. His mouth twisted into a sour smile as he pivoted slowly to face them. "Let me see if I've got this right." He ducked beneath the low ceiling rib and stopped in front of T'Pol. "My First Officer thinks my behavior is erratic and puzzling. Well, no surprise there." He shifted his gaze to Phlox. "My Chief Medical Officer is just itching to drug me unconscious." A step to his right, and he was in front of Reed. "My Armoury Officer thinks I'm being paranoid and suspicious – and, you know, I can't even _begin_ to appreciate the irony of that one."

He flicked his eye toward Trip with an expression approaching hatred. "And, if I remember correctly, my Chief Engineer, my best friend, is convinced that I'm just overdue to get my, what was it, my _ashes_ hauled. Have I left any – oh, yes, Chef. My Chef, apparently, is afraid that I am anorexic. Have I covered everything?"

T'Pol laced her fingers together behind her back. "Captain," she said in a low voice, ignoring the other three people in the room, "I've told you before that you may trust me, and I have trusted you with more than my life on several occasions." Reed shot an interested glance her way as she went on. "Trust me now. You are doing damage to yourself and endangering this mission."

"T'Pol," Archer said hoarsely, "I'm perfectly okay." He tried to smile confidently, failed completely. "I know you don't believe me, but, you tell me, have I ever lied to you?"

"Only when you've told me that you were fine when you were not," she replied implacably.

Archer let out a sound of pure frustration and swung back toward the window. And for the first time in the collective memory of everyone present, he clocked his forehead on the metal beam that supported the ceiling.

Into the stunned silence dropped one word: "_Shit_."

Whatever response there might have been to that was lost as the lights dimmed. A moment later, a voice over the intercom announced what all five of them had known instantly. "All hands, go to Tactical Alert. This is not a drill."


	6. Bumper Cars

_For I have known them all already, known them all: -_

_Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,_

_I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; _

_I know the voices dying with a dying fall_

_Beneath the music from a farther room._

_So how should I presume?_

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter Five – Bumper Cars **

It all happened so fast. Armed with a phase pistol and a plasma rifle, Archer found himself crouched behind a support outside Engineering, ready to guard _Enterprise's_ life center.

They heard the sounds of battle long before it reached them, the MACO's barked orders, the distinctive whine of phaser beams slicing through air. There was a low boom, and a concussion of heat; Archer smiled grimly to himself. The flash-bangs were by far the MACOs' favorite toys.

Hayes came flying around the corner, flashing four fingers and then gesturing toward the right. Archer nodded and stood. Four intruders, dead ahead. Hayes was using himself as bait, drawing the Askarinoc into an ambush. Lightning flashed down the corridor, and a ball of energy sizzled past the major, missing his head by mere centimeters. It embedded itself into the bulkhead, flared briefly, then died, leaving an impressive scorch mark. Hayes stared at the burn for a second, then shook it off and sighted his weapon.

There was a certain poetry in Hayes' movements, Archer noted, distracted. The sure-handed way he swung the giant rifle up to rest against his shoulder. The almost casual smile, in profile, as he located his target in the half-lit gloom. The major's finger squeezed the trigger gently, once, twice, and the captain could tell by the tiny flicker of satisfaction that both targets were neutralized. _This is a man who loves his job_, Archer thought, as the world began to spin dizzily. There was a disorienting buzz as the Devastators' implanted homing device transported their bodies back to their ship.

The answering blast snapped him out of his daze. Hayes threw himself backward, out of range, and Archer brought his own weapon up to cover. The creature that came around the corner, firing bursts of orange light, was every devil ever imagined by a human. Immense, faceless, covered head to toe in some metallic black clothing that seemed to absorb what little light there was, it loomed over him all at once. He knew that most of his rounds were hitting its target, as were his companions', but the creature didn't seem to notice. He saw Hayes reach toward his belt for a grenade, only to be sent flying abruptly backwards, a gaping hole in his chest.

A carefully aimed phaser shot went awry as the ship lurched under their feet. Archer landed hard against the bulkhead with his shoulder, but the momentary pain was eclipsed by the realization that _Enterprise_ was being beaten badly. In the next second, he heard the tell-tale hiss in the conduits above his head, and knew that there was a hull breach nearby. Any second now, T'Pol would order emergency bulkheads down, and God help them if they were on the wrong side.

More phaser fire sang past his ear, and the intruder stopped in its tracks, its face melting. It dropped to the deck and lay still. Hayes stepped through the disintegrating green light as the intruder disappeared. Archer shook his head violently. _I just saw you die._

"Sir?" Hayes said urgently, grabbing the captain's arm.

Archer peered down the corridor. "It's not there," he said.

"Homing device, sir," Hayes replied, in a you-know-this-already voice. "They transport back automatically when they die."

"Right," Archer said, not remembering that at all.

He paused a moment to get his bearings. If they could get closer to Engineering, they stood a better chance of not being sucked out into space. He chose a direction based on sound alone, and pushed Hayes in front of him. Glancing behind, he saw a flash of metal – and he couldn't tell whether their pursuers were friendlies or not. He fished his communicator out of his sleeve pocket and flipped it open.

"T'Pol, status!"

"Captain, I suggest you brace yourself immediately," T'Pol said, in exactly the same tone she might use to recommend a good book on solar eclipses. Before Archer could respond, he found himself flying sideways, something which should never occur on a starship. He felt, rather than heard, the ship's distress as _Enterprise _came about tightly and sharply accelerated. It was, perhaps, for the best that he was, both literally and figuratively, in the dark.

"T'Pol!" he shouted, cursing himself for leaving the Bridge at all. There was just dead air, no calm response, no static. He opened his mouth and glanced at Hayes before the world shattered and the two of them were sucked abruptly out into space, their lungs exploding in the unforgiving vacuum.

"Sir," came Hoshi's quiet voice, "we've got incoming."

Archer jerked to attention in his chair, one hand pressed against his chest, measuring the too fast inhale and exhale of whole and healthy lungs. There was a beat, and Archer didn't know if it reckoned seconds or minutes. He glanced around the Bridge. The faces were tense, but not alarmed. No one had noticed his slight detour from reality. "Onscreen."

After days of shadowing _Enterprise_, the Askarinoc had apparently decided it was time to acquire this new ship and any cargo aboard her. Fearlessly, the pirate ship drew within sensor range, and hung there. Hoshi replayed the single, terse message sent in Standard English: _Surrender and prepare to be boarded._

At the Tactical Station, Reed stiffened slightly and threw a grim look toward the captain. "I'm reading twenty-six aboard. They've scanned us, too, _very_ thoroughly," he said quietly. "They probably know the color of our underwear."

Never had the captain been so disappointed to be proved right. He had begun to hope that he _was_ delusional, if that would spare his crew one more battle. But now he watched the menacing ship in the view screen, remembered the videotaped slaughters, and knew that invasion was imminent.

"You've got a plan, Mr. Reed?" he asked, gingerly probing the bruised and tender skin on his forehead.

Reed half-smiled, more of a grimace, really. "Actually, I've got the beginnings of a half-baked scheme, sir, but I'm still working on it."

"Work faster," Archer said. "T'Pol, will conventional weapons work against these beings? Phase pistols, grenades?"

The Science Officer considered. "It would appear so, although I would recommend the kill setting, rather than stun." Hoshi drew a startled breath. The Vulcan did not usually propose using deadly force. "Although our crew outnumber them, their weapons will likely be superior."

"Yeah, except this isn't a ship full of civilians and children," Archer observed tartly. "And we're highly motivated."

"Sir," Reed offered, "perhaps we should take a page out of the Nausicaans' playbook. Code One-Eleven."

Archer glanced over at T'Pol. She tilted her head slightly, rapidly running through the pros and cons in her mind. But she wasn't a tactician, and Archer knew what his response would be before she even spoke. "Do it, Malcolm."

The announcement, so rare as to be almost anecdotal, electrified the crew. Immediately, non-essential systems shut down all over the ship. Corridors emptied as crewmembers locked themselves into their assigned quarters, or reported to duty stations. Hoshi tracked the movements, and reported as each department confirmed the code.

Archer felt the shift in the ship's atmosphere. "Dock or transport, Malcolm?"

"I would bet transport first, then docking, sir." Reed scanned the energy readings emanating from the Askarinoc ship, looking for the tell-tale surge that would signal the advance boarding party's arrival. "What I wouldn't give for a couple cubic centimeters of that tamirite just now."

"Travis, on my mark, change heading ten degrees starboard. Keep us in firing range, though."

"Aye, sir," Mayweather replied, fingers already plotting the course change.

"Should I hail them?" Hoshi asked.

"They had their chance to talk," Archer growled. "Let them eat silence."

The Bridge crew sat in tense anticipation for several minutes. Then, at last, too soon, Reed said, "Picking up a surge, sir."

_One, two, three_. "Mark, Travis," Archer said, and the silver ship gracefully sidestepped, as if performing a simple step on a dance floor. The carefully calibrated transporter beam skittered across the hull and landed in open space, dispersing the atoms of the six would-be invaders across a wide portion of space.

Archer allowed himself a small smile. Perhaps he would regret this latest act of murder when this was all over, but for now, he had other things to think about.

"They're arming torpedoes," Reed said.

"Evasive, prepare to return fire."

The first three torpedoes took out warp capability. No surprise there; the Devastators had obviously been studying _Enterprise_ in great detail over the past several days. They knew just where to hit her, and how hard. And outrunning them had never been an option.

"No hull breaches yet," Hoshi said.

"They want the ship intact," Archer replied. He watched as _Enterprise's_ phase cannons did little damage to the other ship. Another volley from the enemy, and the ship shuddered as if she'd been slapped. It took all of Mayweather's skill to control the inertial roll. The lights dimmed further.

"Hayes to Reed. Teams are ready at the docking ports."

"You have downwards from twenty, Major," Reed answered, making a move for the turbo lift. "I'm on my way."

"Armoury'll be there in a minute with the Bridge Box," Hayes added, "so try not to shoot her."

Reed exchanged an amused look with the captain. "I'll pass that along, Major." He locked gazes with the intense-looking young MACO left to defend the command crew, and felt a flicker of pity for the invader who might try to take the Bridge.

With Reed gone, Archer moved to Tactical, running his eye over the console to find his next target. T'Pol transmitted her scans of the Devastators' ship to him, and he noted with satisfaction that they were all on the same wavelength regarding the best possible attack scenario.

The lift door slid open, and the young MACO proved the worth of his training by controlling his trigger finger and not shooting the security officer dead. She stepped down into the command well and popped open the traveling arsenal affectionately known as the Bridge Box.

The Box contained enough hand weapons for the entire command crew, plus grenades and a few heavy pulse rifles that Archer wasn't even rated on. Reed clearly believed in the value of a Last Stand; any intruder who pressed its way as far as the Bridge would likely get no farther.

A dark head appeared at Archer's shoulder; he turned and found the muzzle of a phase pistol uncomfortably close to his temple. "Watch that weapon, Crewman . . ." He craned his head.

"Vaughn, sir," the crewman replied, lowering the pistol and turning it butt forward. Archer felt his heart clench as he took the weapon.

"Amy."

"Yes, sir." She seemed inordinately pleased that her captain would know her first name.

_You know, I had a dream about you a couple of nights ago, Amy. I dreamed I bashed your brains in with a metal bar._ She flashed him a smile, a little nervous but not horrified, and he guessed that he had not actually said that last bit out loud. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, added insurance to keep the words in. She was still looking at him expectantly. "Stay sharp."

"Yes, sir."

T'Pol looked up. "Captain, a pod has attached itself to Docking Port Two. And the Askarinoc ship is coming about."

"Tell Reed he's got one minute, then he's gotta pull his men back. They're not setting foot on my ship. Not today," Archer muttered, inputting data into the tactical console.

"The lieutenant has acknowledged. They estimate seven intruders," T'Pol reported. "They're engaging. Shots fired. Two injuries. They're falling back." She saw Travis flex his fingers, and read the determined look on Archer's face. In normal circumstances, she might have concluded that there was no way this maneuver would work, but she had learned over the past year that there was no more unpredictable force in the universe than a desperate human.

She grasped the edge of the science console tightly, although she didn't expect even her Vulcan strength to save her from hitting the deck. She hoped the humans would not be too seriously damaged. She heard Ensign Sato say, "All hands, brace for impact," over the shipwide intercom, following whatever protocol might apply in this situation.

"Now, Mr. Mayweather," Archer said, a hint of defiance in his voice.

And Travis, gripping the joystick with both hands, aimed _Enterprise_ directly at the Askarinoc ship, sliding port on thrusters only, using the larger ship to scrape the would-be boarding party's pod off of the saucer section like gum off a shoe.

Only Travis managed to keep his seat, although he let out a groan as his muscles protested. Given the task of controlling a ship that was trying to stop and go simultaneously, the helmsman held on for all of their sakes, teeth gritted and sweat beading on his brow. T'Pol picked herself up immediately, fixing her gaze on the view port to assess the damage.

The enemy ship spun a few times, taken by surprise, perhaps, by the sheer audacity of the maneuver. But within a few seconds, it righted itself, relative to its target, and let loose a series of blasts that took out the primary lighting and half of the hull plating.

Archer blinked a couple of times, trying to dispel the grey spots congregating in front of his eyes. He held his left wrist tightly against his hip, bracing what he hoped was a sprain and not a break. As he awkwardly rose from the deck and took his seat again, he heard Travis mutter, with the boomer's characteristic understatement, "I think they're done playing, sir."

Hoshi's console chirped: that would be Trip checking in. "Commander Tucker says he can give you warp in another ten minutes, sir."

_If he says ten, he means eight_, Archer thought, _and we don't have eight more minutes._ "Tell him we'll need full weapons for two."

Hoshi nodded. "Aye, sir."

The captain shot a look toward his second-in-command, who radiated calm with her perfectly blank expression. He glanced at Travis, patiently waiting for the word. "Up and over, Travis. Let's end this right now."

While the helmsman made the ship dance in three dimensions, Archer blocked out all sound. His vision telescoped to the tactical array and the shifting, moving cypher representing the Devastators' ship. He hoped the array was properly aligned for once; he didn't trust what little skill and aim he had. _William Tell was an archer,_ he mused before sternly commanding himself to focus. He barely registered firing the phase cannons, fore and aft, fingers stabbing the touch screen, strafing the enemy ship as _Enterprise_ glided above it _sail on, silver girl, sail on by, _barely noticed the plumes of fire as maybe three shots out of five hit their mark _I wonder if Malcolm will yell at me for my poor marksmanship_, cared not at all about the unidentifiable organic matter flying out of the stricken ship_ how can you murder children_, felt it like a wound to the heart when _Enterprise_ absorbed one last shot from the dying ship.

Travis completed his last turn, and suddenly the blip was gone from the tactical monitor. Archer's head jerked up toward the view screen; the cold hulk hung limply in space, scorched and dead. "Not so invincible after all," he said.

After a moment, T'Pol asked, "Ensign Sato, casualties?"

Hoshi replied, relief not yet evident in her voice, "Two of the MACOs have been taken to Sickbay. Other minor injuries reported throughout the ship. Sounds like bumps and bruises, mostly." She pressed the earpiece firmly. "No communications from the Askarinoc, although I am reading four bio-signs."

"Resume course for Azati Prime, Travis, best speed." Archer said, and T'Pol looked at him with a close approximation of surprise. He read her face and continued, "Leave them there."

Carefully, T'Pol rose from her seat and crossed the Bridge to the Tactical Station. Even in the dim light, she could see that Archer's complexion was grey, sweat gleaming on his bruised forehead. The lines bracketing his mouth might as well have been chiseled there. His right hand gripped the rail of the station, white-knuckled, and his left wrist was already purple and swollen. "Sir," she said quietly, "you should go to Sickbay. Phlox needs to look at your wrist."

Archer glanced around the Bridge. "Where's Vaughn?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Crewman Vaughn," Archer said. "The crewman who just brought up the Bridge Box."

From the corner of her eye, T'Pol saw Ensign Mayweather stiffen, although he did not turn around. She kept her voice soft and steady. "Captain, the Bridge Box is where it has always been, in the security compartment, there." She gestured behind Archer's left foot.

"But . . . she was --"

"Captain, Crewman Amy Vaughn was killed by a Triannon suicide bomber two months ago. She could not have been on the Bridge just now." She thought she saw him shake a little before he got himself back under control. "Sir, let me escort you to Sickbay."

Reed was reluctantly having a minor burn dressed when the captain and First Officer arrived. If he noticed that the captain seemed not to be listening as he gave a brief status report – two MACOs and one security officer in serious but stable condition, all intruders spaced during Travis' little bumper cars stunt – he didn't let on.

Phlox, who was not a fool, took the opportunity to diagnose a slight concussion and a hairline fracture of the wrist, and to place the captain on bed rest for two days. A sidelong glance at T'Pol confirmed that if Archer didn't comply, his second-in-command would mention the little fact that the captain had been experiencing hallucinations while on the Bridge. Vulcans, it appeared, were not above blackmail. He pressed his lips together in irritation, and gave a curt nod, anything but graceful in defeat.


	7. The Better Part

_I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach._

_I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each._

_I do not think they will sing to me._

_--_

_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_

_By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown_

_Till human voices wake us, and we drown._

_-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" _

**Chapter Six – The Better Part**

"Bridge to Sub-Commander T'Pol."

T'Pol winced as Trip, startled, dug his thumb a bit too hard into the base of her neck. She shot him an exasperated look over her shoulder as she rose to answer the comm.

"Sorry," he muttered. She was so much better at performing neuropressure than he was; whenever he got the hang of a technique, she moved on to a new one and he had to start from scratch.

"T'Pol here."

"Sub-Commander, we'll be entering the Azati system in about six hours."

"Thank you, Mr. D'Agostino. Have you informed the captain?"

"He didn't respond to the page, ma'am."

T'Pol exchanged worried glances with Trip, but kept her voice level. "I'll locate him myself."

Trip sat up, wiping the perspiration from his chest with his tee-shirt. "This doesn't sound good."

T'Pol's fingers flew over her computer console. She was one of the few people who knew how to isolate bio signs on the ship. She looked up. "The captain is in his quarters."

Trip threw his shirt on, fighting alarm. "And he's not answering the comm? Damn." He raced out the door, with T'Pol on his heels.

Trip's dread only intensified when he found the captain's door unlocked. Archer often neglected to engage the security code during the early evening hours; his quarters were like Jupiter Station sometimes with all the comings and goings, and he got tired of walking over and manually releasing the door every time he had a visitor. But it was nearly one o'clock in the morning, and the damned door should have been locked.

They found him sprawled on his back across the bed, still in uniform, boots on – another bad sign – dead to the world. T'Pol checked for his pulse, her heart freezing for a moment when she couldn't find it, before she remembered that the human pulse point was under the jaw, not behind the ear. It was slow and steady, but even the light pressure on his skin didn't wake him.

Trip leaned over and shook Archer gently. "Cap'n. Cap'n, are you all right?"

First the lips moved: soundless, half-formed words, a sigh. _I suppose you expect me to invite you back to my apartment. . . Well, what are my chances?. . . Hmmm, you're in luck . . ._ Then the fingers twitched reflexively. _You remember my sister, Lizzie?. . . Of course I do. You're prettier than I recall, much better looking than your hound-dog brother . . . _He frowned and moved his head, an unquiet dreamer, fighting consciousness. _I've never seen water so blue. I wish . . ._

"Captain." His whole body convulsed as he came awake all at once, heels digging into the mattress, jamming him up against the bank of pillows. His left hand, tightly bandaged, came up in a fist while his right groped around for a non-existent weapon. "Captain," T'Pol repeated, her normal monotone a soothing sound, "you were dreaming."

_Dreaming, yes._ Archer turned his face into the pillow for a moment, trying and failing to hold on to those disappearing wisps of hope. The images of peace, even joy, dissolved as if they'd never been. He was alone; Elizabeth Tucker and seven million others were dead; and they were hurtling though space toward certain disaster. '_Human voices wake us, and we drown.'_

He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, removing the tears along with the remnants of the first pleasant sleep he'd had in weeks. "What?" he asked in a gravelly voice. "What's happened."

"You didn't answer the Bridge's page," Trip said, worry clouding his voice. "We thought you were -"

"Incapacitated," T'Pol supplied as Archer swung his legs over the side of the bed, grumpily waving off assistance. He sat, hunched, willing his thoughts to organize themselves. T'Pol went on, "We'll be entering the Azati system in approximately six hours. I believe you wanted to brief the crew beforehand."

Archer sighed deeply. "What time is it?"

"Oh-one-hundred hours."

Another deep sigh, a roll of shoulders. "Senior staff at seven hundred. Stay on the fringe. No point in announcing our presence before we know what's in there." He rose stiffly and headed toward the shower, turning when neither Trip nor T'Pol made any move to leave. "I'll see you at oh-seven-hundred. Dismissed."

x x x

T'Pol had just settled into a chair in the otherwise empty Crew's Mess with a mug of chamomile tea and a PADD when the door opened and the captain stepped in. He looked presentable, if not entirely rested, in a fresh uniform and damp hair. He had removed the wrist brace. _Stubborn human_. He paused before striding to the drinks dispenser for a coffee, and for a moment, T'Pol thought that he might duck back out again or escape to his private Mess. But he quickly covered the urge so plainly etched on his face and walked slowly over to her table.

"May I join you?" he asked quietly, as if he half-expected her to say, _No, go away_.

She inclined her head slightly and he sat.

Sensitive enough to know that there was something in particular on the captain's mind, T'Pol waited. After a while, Archer said, "I want to apologize for the way I've treated you lately. I was out of line a number of times, and . . . well, I really have no excuse for it."

"You have been under a great deal of stress," T'Pol answered gently. "Further, it is impossible to injure feelings that I do not have."

Archer smiled briefly at her lame attempt at humor, then sobered. "Be that as it may," he continued, eyebrows raised, "I said some very rude things to you, T'Pol, and I swore at you. That's not who I am, and you deserve better treatment than that. I apologize."

She gazed at him in silence, not entirely sure after all these years what to do with a human request for forgiveness. "This is where you say, 'I accept your apology,'" Archer prompted.

"I accept your apology," she parroted, and as he relaxed his shoulders, the hard part over, she added, "But it is not necessary."

He decided to let her have the last word, apparently, and sat back, blowing the steam from his coffee. She resumed her reading at the passage where she had left off. After a moment of feeling him watching her read, she lowered the PADD and commented, "Lieutenant Reed's report on the Askarinoc."

Archer grimaced. "Don't tell me they were a figment of my imagination, too."

T'Pol was not sure whether this was a rhetorical question, so she handed the PADD over. "Unfortunately, there were no remains of any of the intruders, so they persist as somewhat of a mystery. However, their existence is fully documented by Mr. Reed."

The captain closed his eyes briefly. "We were lucky we didn't lose any crew." He saw Hayes flying backward, and felt the cold of open space on his skin. "Somehow, I thought it would be . . . worse."

"Perhaps the Askarinoc underestimated _Enterprise's_ capacity as a warship," T'Pol observed.

"A warship," Archer repeated softly. "Yeah, I guess that's what we are, now." He scanned the report, as much to avoid T'Pol's eyes as to glean insight about the surprisingly short-lived battle. Reed had described the encounter thoroughly but succinctly, with no mention at all of the captain's strange behavior. _Better than I deserve,_ he thought wryly. "I'm sure Starfleet will be interested, if we ever get home."

"_When_ we get home," T'Pol was compelled to say.

The captain eyed her, his face devoid of expression. "Right. When."

With his elbows on the table, he lifted his mug of coffee, still steaming but no longer scalding, and started in surprise when he felt that movement arrested. T'Pol covered both of his hands with hers – she who did not reach out and touch, but who did not seem to mind when he touched her – in an odd reversal of roles. He placed the cup gently back down onto the table, but she did not let go.

He couldn't look at her, so he turned his gaze toward the view port, at an unfamiliar star system which may or may not contain the Xindi weapon. "I don't think I can do this," he admitted quietly. He couldn't tell whether the warmth radiating through his hands came from the mug or her palms.

"You are right," T'Pol said. "You cannot."

His eyes flew to hers that time, and he tried to pull his hands away. She was Vulcan, though, and it took very little effort on her part to thwart his escape.

"You cannot do this alone," she went on calmly. "There are nearly one hundred beings on board _Enterprise_, each one with his or her own specific skill, each one a part of this mission for a reason."

"Even Porthos?" Archer challenged absurdly, trying to deflect the intensity of her stare.

"Porthos," T'Pol replied, "reminds you of Earth, and of everything that is at stake."

_Damn the woman. Bad enough that she had no sense of humor. Did she always have to be right, too?_

She went on. "It seems the Askarinoc were not the only ones to underestimate _Enterprise_ and her captain."

"You think I built them up in my mind."

"I do."

"That they represented something bigger."

"Yes."

"Well, that would mean that I _am_ crazy, now wouldn't it?" There was a hint of, _Aha - gotcha with logic_, in his voice.

She stopped him cold, wiped the smirk off of his face, by saying, without a touch of accusation, "No, Captain, only that you are afraid." Another pull of hands, more resistance. A drop of hot coffee sloshed over the side of the mug. "It would be illogical, and uncharacteristic, for a human in your position not to fear failure, as devastating as the consequences would be."

"You wouldn't know anything about that. Vulcans don't feel fear." And just like that, he was back to the aloof man she knew. He slid his hands out from under hers, and picked up the PADD, pretending to skim the information there as he said casually, "Maybe you should've headed this mission. A Vulcan would have made better choices. Captain _Vanik,_" he pulled the first name he could think of out of thin air, "probably wouldn't have tortured a prisoner in an airlock for information."

"_Captain Vanik_ would likely still be arguing the logic of cooperation with the prisoner, even now, instead of approaching the Azati system," T'Pol retorted, stopping a millimeter short of sarcasm.

A short laugh escaped him then. He couldn't help it. Snarky T'Pol always took him by surprise.

He slid the PADD back across the table to her, a movement which stopped as abruptly as her change of topic. "Have your nightmares abated?"

"They're not as . . . frequent," Archer said, after a moment and a deep sigh. "I've been able to get a little sleep. But I think maybe Phlox slipped me a mickey in that concoction he gave me." T'Pol simply raised an eyebrow and said nothing. "And I haven't had anymore . . . well. Whatever that was, it hasn't happened again. I don't think it will."

Ghosts, demons. It scared him to think that reality could slip away from him so completely while he was on the Bridge, at a time when his wits were the only thing standing between _Enterprise_ and destruction. Especially now, here, in this place where _Enterprise_ was the only thing standing between Earth and oblivion. And that fear had ultimately convinced him to accept Phlox's natural sedative remedy (he didn't even want to think about what it was made from) and sleep uneventfully, if not dreamlessly, off and on for close to thirty hours.

"I don't think it will," he said again, as much to convince himself as his First Officer. "Besides, something tells me there won't be any time for dreams, either asleep or awake, until this is over."

T'Pol didn't respond to that, only pushed her now-cooled cup of chamomile tea to the captain's side of the table, and picked up his mug of coffee. "You cannot do this alone," she reminded him.

Archer smiled slightly and raised the mug of medicinal-smelling tea. "Cheers, T'Pol," he said, gesturing with the mug, and took a tiny sip.

x x x

There was one more fence to mend, and the captain's boots felt like lead as he stopped in front of Engineering. _Enterprise_ was an hour out of the Azati system, and Archer knew somehow that if he didn't do this now, he never would. He had a sneaking suspicion that this was one of the last moments under his control, before endgame.

Trip's face was cautiously open as the captain approached. He immediately launched into a report of the status of the engines. It had taken several hours to recover from the Askarinoc beatdown, he explained, moving quickly to the computer monitor, but they were finishing the last of the simulations now. Archer put up a hand. Trip's voice trailed off, and the two stood uncomfortably for a moment, the engineer waiting, the captain searching for words.

Finally, he managed a soft, "How're you doing, Trip," letting the engineer know that it was Jon Archer, not The Captain, standing in front of him.

Trip shrugged. "A bit better than you look," he observed. "But it's nice to see you closer to normal, Cap'n."

Archer shifted uncomfortably, having arrived at the heart of the matter before he was quite ready. "Well, um, I wanted to . . . I know I haven't been myself lately, and . . ." He swallowed, resolutely refusing to break eye contact. He would not allow himself that cop-out. "I seem to be getting a lot of practice apologizing lately. You, Malcolm, T'Pol. I said a lot of things I didn't mean."

Raising his hand, palm out, Trip said, "The last couple of days have been crazy. I swear, I couldn't do what you do, make the decisions you make. I'd be surprised if you _weren't_ completely stressed out."

"I'm not just talking about the last few days, although that's. . . well. We've been in the Expanse for a while now, and I know I've been. . ." Archer frowned, frustrated that he couldn't seem to complete a thought. Closing his eyes, he clenched his teeth, blew out a breath, and then made himself say what he needed to say. "I've been trying so hard to be the captain, I haven't been a very good friend. I'm sorry."

Trip looked away, embarrassed, relieved, or disappointed, Archer couldn't tell. But there was a glitter in the blue eyes when they turned back to him, and a grim set to the engineer's mouth. "To tell you the truth, Cap'n, you're right. You haven't been. You've been kind of a jerk, and not the guy I've known for ten years. But, you know what, I don't care."

Archer took an involuntary step backward, hurt.

"Frankly, I don't _want_ you to be warm 'n fuzzy," Trip continued fiercely. "I don't _want_ you friendly. I don't _want_ you reasonable." Trip clenched both his teeth and his fists, and dropped his voice almost to a growl. "When you and Degra were in the simulator, I listened to that. . . that _murderer_ talk about how he had designed the weapon that decimated Earth. How he was _so damned proud_ of himself. Those seven million people never did anything to him, and he just wiped them out, all in a day's work.

"I want us to destroy that weapon. I wanna make those Xindi bastards pay. I want us to make the Askarinoc look like _nursery school teachers_." He leaned closer to Archer, and the captain could feel the waves of hate radiating off him. "And if that means that you have to be an ice-cold, hard-hearted son-of-a-bitch, then, hell, Cap'n, I can live with that."

Archer stood for a moment, feeling empty, feeling as if the better part of him had deserted him once and for all. There would be no restraint, and no absolution. No one would remind him of the quality of mercy. _Very well, then_, he capitulated to the universe,_ you win._ "We will stop them, Trip," Archer promised, "and they will pay. I swear it on my life."

x x x

_Enterprise_ eased into the Azati system, cautiously scanning for any ships that might give away her position. The red giant, Azati Prime, filled the center of the viewscreen like an enormous evil eye. There was a hush on the Bridge, as if the command crew couldn't quite believe that they had made it this far, that they were within a few thousand kilometers of the massive weapon which threatened to destroy their world. It was still possible, however, that their ploy had failed, that Degra had, indeed, sent them on a wild goose chase as he'd insisted. They could have been within touching distance, or light years away . . .

"There's a convoy of ships approaching," Hoshi said, and put it up on screen. The shapes were familiar: Xindi.

Archer drew himself up stiffly, as the last nine months crystalized into this moment. "Let's see the lead ship's signature," he ordered, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Two blocks appeared on the left side of the screen, one depicting the trail of the Xindi ship they had boarded, the other showing the one in front of them. They were identical. "Degra," Archer breathed. Their gamble had paid off. Despite the detours, despite the challenges, Earth's lone Warp Five starship had found the facility where the Xindi weapon was being built.

And there it was again, the fear. He knew they would be hopelessly outnumbered. He knew there would be a confrontation, a clash of lasers and torpedos, hull breaches and flames. He knew more of his crew would perish. He knew he would not come out of this alive.

_How can you murder children?_

And in that moment, he was the Xindi, fighting to preserve his homeworld. And he was the Askarinoc, willing to lay waste to everything in his path. And he was the Nausicaan, reciting the roll of the dead _Fuller, Sim, Vaughn _and the soon to be dying. And he was human, feeling his humanity slipping silently away.

He recalled, vividly, how he had begged, cajoled, and bullied Admiral Forrest into letting him take _Enterprise_ into the Expanse, for an opportunity to meet the Xindi head-on. _All I'm asking is to take _Enterprise_ and find these Xindi. What do we have to lose, a single starship? Seems like a small price to pay if there's one chance in a million . . . _How he had scoffed, full of _hubris_, at the Vulcans' insistence that the humans were unprepared for the horrors of this region of space. _It's a risk I'm willing to take, and I imagine most of my crew would be with me._ How Soval had described the Klingons who had returned, physically turned inside out, still living.

That was not the only thing the Expanse turned inside out, he reflected. Morals, ethics – everything he had blithely counted on to make him human. Without those, he didn't know who or what he was anymore.

_You cannot do this alone._

This had been his father's goal, and his own dream, to explore space. Human curiosity had led to this. Their push to touch the stars had resulted in a lie foolishly believed and a vicious strike pre-emptively taken. If Vulcans ever stooped to saying, "I told you so," at least he wouldn't be around to hear it.

He looked around the Bridge at the determined faces, and let his mind review the crew list, matching faces to names and ranks. He knew them all. Every one of them was committed; every one of them was counting on him.

He straightened his shoulders, fully in command of the Bridge, of his ship. He would not let them, or Earth, down - no matter what it took.

'_Human voices wake us, and we drown.'_

"T'Pol, send what you have to the Situation Console," he ordered with quiet authority. "And get Trip up here, on the double." It was time to finish this.

How naïve he had been to think the nightmare would end when he awoke.

The End


End file.
